The water rushed up and up, then She/They broke surface, and found Her/Their self bobbing on the surface of a huge lake. The ripples of Her/Their arrival slowly died and She/They was partially submerged in a glassy smooth lake that appeared to stretch all the way to the horizon.
‘Approach of humans monitored.’
‘We are prepared for defensive action if humans prove hostile.’
The humans moved across the surface of the lake propelling a crude floating craft. No machinery of energy transfer could be detected. They appeared to attain forward motion by the use of their own bodies.
Their craft cut a long V in the surface of the lake as they moved across it. She/They watched and waited. The humans had always puzzled Her/Them. At times it almost seemed that they might have a primitive grasp of the essential con-conception of the symmetry that was Her/Their joy and being, then they would contradict the whole idea by their illogical disordered crudeness. They would swarm over Her/Their hard-won stable areas, violating them with their haphazard behaviour and rude creations.
The humans seemed to have a coarse resilience, possibly a natural compensation for their obvious stupidity, that enabled them to resist both the disruptors and even Her/Their efforts to bring a degree of order to their hideously random lives.
She/They found that there was no way in which She/They could really manipulate them. She/They could sense them totally, and at times they could perceive Her/Them. Beyond that, She/They found that She/They had no power to move them. They occupied the same stable zones. It seemed that the humans clung to stable zones, but on different levels. The levels might be close at times, and even parallel, but there was always a gulf between Her/Them and the humans. They neither aided nor threatened, they just existed. To Her/Them they appeared as a strange byproduct of the disruption.
***
The day turned into night, and the music went on and on, complex and contorted, and then, the next minute, simple and driving. Lights appeared in the trees so the jungle looked alive and glowing. Areas of foliage had been sprayed with phosphorescent paint. It was invisible by day, but with the darkness and the black lights mounted in the trees the plants pulsed and shimmered in a riot of unearthly colours.
As the music became more loose and wild, the rapt attention dissolved into dancing and laughing. Couples and groups moved in and out of the lights and shadows. Casks of wine, narcotic fruit, bottles and pharmaceuticals from a hundred cultures were brought from the stuff machine.
Billy had lost track of Reave as he wandered along the jungle paths with the strange silent girl. He had been offered so many different things, strange liquors, exotic drugs, that his head was spinning and his vision played awesome, spectacular tricks on him. They passed a battery of red and green lights that pulsed on and off, and the girl’s face dissolved into a glowing rainbow. Billy stood perfectly still and stared at her.
‘You’re fucking beautiful. This whole place is beautiful.’
The girl smiled at him. To Billy, it was a flash like the sun coming up. He hugged her, and then they walked on, across the floor of the clearing. The Minstrel Boy was still sitting in with the band. His eyes were closed in total concentration as he tried to coax more and more from the silver guitar. Sweat stood out on his forehead and he seemed totally oblivious to the dancing crowd around him. Billy and the girl stood arm in arm and watched for a while, then they moved on, out of the clearing and along the shining paths that ran through the tall trees.
They came to a smaller glade where two large U.V. generators shone down on the soft leafy jungle floor. Billy felt a new sensation in his head, and he guessed there were a couple of alphasets tuned to wide dispersal somewhere in the bushes.
A number of people were gathered in the glade. Most were naked, some had their bodies painted in colours that glowed under the ultra-violet light. Some of them sat while others lay on the ground and caressed each other. There were few couples. The naked people in the glade grouped themselves in threes, and there were two large groups of seven or eight, who laughed and writhed together in a mass experience. Billy stood at the edge of the glade and watched in fascination. The girl let go of his hand and quickly slipped out of her clothes. She held out her hand, inviting him to do the same, and join the people in the glade. Under the U-V. light her skin became very dark, while her lips and the whites of her eyes glowed an eerie blue.
Billy slowly took off his clothes, while the girl stood behind him and stroked his back. He placed his clothes beside hers and then she took his hand and led him into the glade. She sank to her knees in front of a group of three intertwined people, a boy and two girls who looked like they couldn’t be more than fifteen. Billy knelt down beside the girl and the three others held out their hands in welcome. The music soared through the trees.
Billy let his mind float. The hands and lips that moved across his body, the roaring music and the shifting lights couldn’t be logically put together. He just ran with it, letting himself drift in a world of sensuality, confident that nothing bad could happen to him in this place.
Hours later, Billy found himself lying on the floor of the glade staring blankly at the sky starting to become light in tiny patches between the leaves and branches. The girl was curled up with her head on his chest. His body felt totally exhausted, but the colours in his mind kept swirling and changing. Sleep was impossible. He lay on the ground, totally drained. Memories of the last few hours flooded through his mind in dislocated images of faces, bodies. They invited him, smiled intertwined with his. They distorted into their component colours, and merged back together to form something else that started the process again.
Above him, the sky grew brighter. He was aware that the music had stopped. The only sounds were the rustling in the undergrowth. The first birds were starting their morning chorus. He absently stroked the girl’s smooth, golden, sleeping body. He felt totally at peace. The forest was like a huge, rambling cathedral. Thin beams of light lanced through the high ceiling of foliage and illuminated tiny bright patches of the soft moss that covered the floor of the glade.
It seemed to Billy that everywhere he looked, the forest was a bright rich mosaic. It took him a long time to realize that someone was talking to him.
‘Come on, Billy. Pull yourself together. We’ve got to move in a while.’
He focused on the two faces that looked down on him. It was Reave and the Minstrel Boy, but their faces seemed hard and cruel and their clothes coarse and out of place after the beauty of the night before. They refused to leave him alone.
‘Hey, Billy. We got to go soon. Come on, man. Get your clothes on. Move it, Billy.’
‘Go?’
‘Yeah, go. We got a boat to catch.’
‘We don’t have to catch the boat yet, do we?’
‘Yeah, pretty soon.’
Billy sat up and clasped his knees to his chest.
‘I’m not going.’
Reave and the Minstrel Boy looked at him in amazement.
‘What do you mean, not going?’
‘I want to stay here.’
‘Stay here?’
‘That’s right, man. I’m happy here. I don’t want to leave.’
‘But we got to leave. That’s what you always say, keep moving, keep on looking. We’ve got a boat to catch.’
‘Fuck the boat. I want to stay here. I like it. You understand? I’m happy, I found something. I don’t want to move on. I don’t want to get myself together. Fuck that shit, man. I like it here.’
The Minstrel Boy stuck his hands in his pockets.