16. The Sparks Shooting from the Tower: This tower stood for two hundred and fifty years.
It resisted five enemy attacks. Those who lived in the tower praised its strength. Honored it with songs. Spread its fame through all countries.
More than four hundred children have been born within its walls. Most grew to adulthood here, and died when their time came.
Diplomats came here from across the sea. They complimented the strong walls, the view that commands the surrounding territory, the strategic positioning of wells and storehouses.
This tower stood for two hundred and fifty years.
We sparks last a second at most.
Don't you dare feel sorry for this damned tower.
17. The Bird Observing the Star: A woman is pouring water, some on the ground, some into a pool. Huge white stars circle around an enormous yellow one.
Portents. Humans love portents. Humans hunger after portents.
We birds haven't forgotten about Roman auguries. The priests slit living birds open, just to look for portents in their entrails. Entrails…humans always use the word "entrails." The truth is the priests would cut out our hearts. They cut out our livers. They cut out our intestines and scanned them inch by inch like stockbrokers examining ticker tape.
Stockbrokers examine ticker tape for portents.
We birds see everything, from stockbrokers to stars, but we don't see portents. Birds have no portents, not even portents of things that concern us, like winter. One fall day we find ourselves flying south, that's all.
That's all.
18. The Dog Who Bays at the Moon: Wolves howl at the moon.
Dogs bay.
Here's the difference.
A wolf is shouting a challenge, crying defiance at the great face in the sky. A wolf is saying, "Despite hunters and hunger and sickness and snow, I'll be here again next month, same as you. You go on and I'll go on. You might be hidden by a cloud, but I'll still be here. And when I die, my children will howl for me, and the pack will howl and every pack will howl, until you slink below the horizon. We are forever."
A dog is greeting a companion, a fellow traveler that humans revere or ignore. A dog is saying, "You and me, moon, we're the ones who know how to laugh. Whatever damned thing the human race comes up with next, it's okay with us. Dogs are no more domesticated than you are, moon; we're just easygoing. Why make a fuss? Eating is good, sniffing is good, sleeping is good. Most things are okay."
That's what we dogs say to the moon.
It's the only sane attitude. Wolves are too intense.
19. The Sunflowers Beneath the Sun: Height! More height! More height!
Height is sun and sun is height.
The pretty-doll flowers in the garden next to us are irrational. They hug the ground. They keep their heads down. They don't compete.
Why? Why? Why?
It must be some mutual agreement to remain mediocre. If no one sticks her head up, no one else gets overshadowed. And they're all so spineless—they're so afraid of losing if they take a chance, they're so reluctant to seem rude—they remain prissy little runts all their lives.
We sunflowers have more stomach. We strangle each other. We compete. More height means more sun. More sun means more height.
The prissy little runts ask how much sun and height a flower really needs.
More! The answer is always more!
20. The Trumpet That Wakes the Dead for Judgment: It's no big deal. At the End of Time, the angel Gabriel will use me to blow a single note and the dead will rise from their graves. Until then, I stay silent.
I can handle that.
Gabriel can't. It's a big responsibility for him, and he'd like to practice. Sometimes he takes me out of the case, puts my mouthpiece to his lips, and thinks about playing. Something soft. Something so low human ears couldn't hear it. But he knows it's like biting a balloon—big bite or small, the effect is the same.
I have this hunch about the way Heaven works. I don't think Gabriel will ever be given the signal that it's time to blow. I think someday the temptation will just grow too great and he'll crack. He may try a quiet little toot or blast a fanfare that makes the stars echo, but sooner or later he'll break. And that will be the End of Time.
Running things this way, God doesn't have to make the big decision. He just appoints Gabriel as the scapegoat and waits for all hell to break loose.
Me, I'm patient. It will happen or it won't.
Gabriel polishes me every day with the vigor of a man who needs to keep his hands busy. He doesn't sleep well.
21. The Wreath on the Card Called the World: A woman dances, holding a baton. She is clad only in a tastefully draped ribbon.
I surround her, a green wreath with the silhouette of an egg.
In the four corners of the sky, faces look at us: a lion, an eagle, an angel, and a bull.
So. Which one of us is "the world"?
Me? The woman? The watchers? All of us? Some mysterious whole that encompasses us?
Or simply the ink that depicts us and the cardboard that gives the ink something to cling to?
Philosophers may amuse themselves making arguments for each possibility. Theologians may obtain their god's version of the truth and expound it from the pulpit. Cynics may say that the designers of the Tarot didn't know what the hell the world was about, so they took the opportunity to draw another naked woman.
Anything's possible.
Anything's possible.
Anything's possible.
Shadow Album
In the deserted city at the heart of Muta's Great Fog Bank, there is a sundial. Its face is marble, once polished, now rough and pitted with age. The metal of the central gnomon flakes with rust; it has bled a dull brown stain across the dial's gritty white face.
The sundial no longer tells the time—the perpetual fog smears Muta's hot blue sunlight into a diffuse gray that casts no shadows, even at midday.
I visit the sundial often; the sight of it calms me when the loneliness grows too strong. I find it comforting to think even a sundial can stop. It seems to be a promise that no responsibility lasts forever.
Once, this city was home to a million beings. Green plants grew, animals basked at midday, the Mutan people cast shadows and shaded their eyes from the afternoon sun. Now, the only flora are lichens and fungus, and the only animals small scavengers that dart in and out of nests under the crumbled buildings. As for the Mutans, they cast their last shadows long ago.
I carry a camera with me wherever I go, and it is full of shadows. Some are recent—photographs I've taken to pass the time, to pretend that I've chanced upon beauty or importance in a rusted tangle of metal, an oddly shaped mushroom. The recent photos occupy the reusable slots on the camera's recording diskette, shadows I discard as new ones catch my eye. But there is a set of pictures I have tagged to prevent overwriting, shadows cast before the last light left me. Now, as night falls and the ghosts struggle to wake themselves from their collective sleep, I put the diskette into the viewer in my hut and click through my little album.
Picture 1—Exploration Team Harmony on the Plains of Expanding Accord:
Twenty-two men and women stand in the center of a burnt field, the grass charred black by the heat of a Vac/ship's landing. The ship is gone now, back to the orbiting task force where a million colonists wait in suspended animation until Harmony Team certifies the planet safe. Our mission is considered a formality—satellites and robot probes have given Muta such a positive rating that supply caches have already been dropped at selected sites all over the planet. Even so, final approval for colonization rests entirely with our team and its superiors. We do not place blind trust in machines; it is a doctrine of our faith.
By the time this picture was taken, all that remained to be explored was the anomalous fog bank perpetually covering a region of Muta's southern hemisphere: cause unknown, unchanged by wind and sun, impenetrable to orbital eyes. We thought our investigation would be routine and painless.