Am I missing some element of love? The Beauty offer comfort, sex and softness. What else is there? And how can Uncle Ted say he knows these things and I don’t? There are things he has seen, times he has experienced, that I never will – I give him that. But his capacity to hurt, to kill – is that what he thinks makes him a real man? If so, I will never be a real man and I am glad of it.
‘Regardless of what they are,’ says Doctor Ben, ‘we must draw up rules of conduct. The mark of humanity is how it treats the world and those who share it with us – and the Beauty are alive. Whatever they are, they’re alive.
‘We started this Group to live by a set of principles. We grow our own food. We replace what we use. We protect what we rear. Now we have taken the Beauty into us. The Beauty deserve to be treated with respect for our sake, if not for theirs.’
William turns on him, his yellowed teeth bared. ‘You didn’t start this Group at all,’ he says. And that is when I know he has forgotten how to be a leader.
I look at Uncle Ted, and he returns my gaze. Then he says, ‘William, that remark is unworthy of you.’
William does not reply. He shrinks down into himself, getting smaller and smaller, and I know he feels it inside. He is not fit to lead us any more. When Ted says, ‘Right then, let’s draw up a list of rules and Nate can read it out tonight, exactly as it’s written down,’ William does not object, and as smoothly as that power changes hands.
I feel the inspiration of it. Glorious revolution. The schoolbooks talked of it, heads chopped off and crowds baying, and yet all the stability of my world only needed a few words to be wiped away. It didn’t even need a story.
And I am at this meeting to witness it. Ted wanted me here, not William. He wanted me to see the change in power and to understand that I am now his mouthpiece.
My freedom is gone and we are being led by a killer.
To start–
There were no rules. Rules were not necessary. There was man, and there was work and there was plenty. Plenty does not mean riches. There was simply enough. Abundance would have created inequality.
But there was loneliness too. Deep in the bones and brain there was loneliness, in a world of seed and egg, of bee and flower, of pairs. To be a man was to find a hole inside and know it could never be filled.
Until the coming of the Beauty.
They grew from the soil and understood without needing words or guidance. They took a form pleasing to man’s eye and came amongst him, walking into his garden. And there was much fear at first. Man trembled at the new, the unknown. They couldn’t recognise the gift they had been given, even though they took it in their arms and pressed it to their hearts. They were no longer alone, and it was a hard thing to understand.
But then they began to see. Spring came and the birds nested. The hares boxed and the feelings rose up strong in man again. Feelings of love. They began to look at the Beauty and see wealth. Riches.
And then man divided into men. Some men saw their fortune and rejoiced in it. But other men felt their fear grow stronger – fear of what they were being given, what they would have to pay for it and what might be lost. And they looked out at the innocent Beauty and brought violence and pain into their gardens, not through deliberate murderous intent, but through the sickness in their souls.
The sickness led to further division. Should they banish the Beauty and be lonely just so violence could not find them? Or should they face their fear and overcome their instincts? It was too big a question to answer.
But the men had an ally. They had reason. Reason, the greatest gift ever given to them. They could think and think again, and in the thinking there lay solace from simply feeling. If they were at war with their emotions, thinking was the best weapon they possessed.
We are reasonable men. We can think of a path that may, one day, lead to a solution that eases us all.
Here is the path:
We will not kill the Beauty.
We will not hurt the Beauty deliberately.
We will not steal another man’s Beauty.
We will attempt to be honest in all dealings with the Beauty.
We will not speak ill of another man because of how he chooses to deal with his Beauty.
We will hold true to these tenets, for the good of the Group, for now and forever, and on, and on, until the end.
‘I told them,’ I say to Bee, from deep within its embrace. ‘And now Ted wants to see me.’ Am I to be punished? The thought of it won’t leave me.
It feels like three o’clock in the morning. My mother used to say that whenever you wake in the dead of night it’s bound to be three o’clock, it’s just the way it is, and the hands of the clock move slower at that time than at any other. We never had a clock so I couldn’t say, but it is a three-o’clock feeling for sure. More and more of what my mother used to say is returning to me.
My tent hut is warm, my blankets piled high. Bee’s skin is clammy, but I’m used to that. I am comfortable, surrounded by the things I love, the books I have been allowed to take from the school over the years, because nobody else was interested. Some are stolen, I admit; a blind eye was turned by my old teacher Miriam, no doubt. I miss her knack of knowing me and looking like all the answers of life belonged to her, even the impossible ones. I am an adult now and I feel no such surety; I hope I fake confidence as well as she did.
Perhaps that is the role of a responsible person – to fake the confidence he doesn’t feel so that the young can believe in something. Except there are no young ones any more. I’m not sure who I’m faking for.
‘Is it for you?’ I ask Bee, and it strokes my face, putting visions in my head of a masterwork of flesh and yellow, a tower built of our bodies, extending out of our arms and legs to form fresh joints, bones, limbs and even mouths that hum to make a symphony of such beauty that it hurts to hear it. The tower reaches to the sky where all is clear, and down below, under the soil, there are roots that stretch as deep as the tower is tall. Deeper, even, to the great heart of our beating planet. Between us all we make the base and pinnacle of Man and Beauty.
‘How?’ I say to Bee.
It shows me clouds speeding by, days and nights, the movement of the earth, years and years, wrapped and folded like a gift.
‘Men age,’ I whisper. ‘Men die.’ How can we unite in this way, build to harmony? The Beauty will outlive us, but we have only this generation. There will be no more.
I receive in my mind’s eye a picture of Thomas. He cooks in his kitchen kneading bread, his cheeks reddened with the effort, wearing his mother’s dress. He looks – I can’t describe it. There is an aura that surrounds him. I feel the expectation of the Beauty has settled on him. He will do something of phenomenal importance.
‘What?’
But I don’t understand the images I am being shown. The speed of them, the blurs of browns and reds and yellows, the streams of these colours running together. The patterns take me down and Bee hums on. I can feel its pleasure as it lulls me, like a baby, to sleep.
‘We’re very disappointed in you,’ says Uncle Ted.
I don’t know who he means with his we. He stands alone, his hand resting on the stick in his belt.