My muscles ceased straining against the bonds, nor did they slump; they ceased aching, they were at ease, they were ready. I said nothing, I did not change the upward direction of my glance, I did not smile, yet at this moment the high prophet removed the spears and had the moon slaves unbind me. I did not feel stiff nor did my wounds bother me, and when I put on my cougar skin and leaped, pulled the head over my face and roared, all the prophets fell onto their faces before me. I began chanting and I knew I was doing it all the better for knowing what I was about; I led them back out to the waiting people, and until dawn I chanted the story of the birth, prophesying, betrayal, sacrifice, and victory of the most high prophet. I am a good mimic, I was thoroughly trained, the story is the best; what I gave them was, for them, as good as a vision. I did not know the difference myself.
But the next evening I knew the difference. While I performed my ablutions and the routine ceremonies to the full moon I thought with increasing horror of my state of mind during my conscious trance. What my state of mind actually had been I cannot with confidence now represent, for what I know of it is colored by my reaction against it the next day. I had remained conscious, in that I could recall what happened, yet that observer and commentator in myself of whose existence I had scarcely been aware, but whom I had always taken for my consciousness, had vanished. I no longer had been thinking, but had lost control so that my consciousness had become what I was doing; almost worse, when I told the story of Christ I had done it not because I had wanted to or believed in it but because, in some obscure sense, I had had to. Thinking about it afterward I did not understand or want to understand what I was drifting toward, but I knew it was something that I feared. And I got out of there as soon as I was physically able.
Here in Sansom what I have learned has provided me with material for an honorable contribution to knowledge, has given me a tenure to a professorship — thereby pleasing my wife — whereas if I had stayed there among the Dangs much longer I would have reverted until I had become one of them, might not have minded when the time came to die under the sacrificial knife, would have taken in all ways the risk of prophecy — as my Dang son intends to do — until I had lost myself utterly.
IMMEDIATELY YOURS
by Robert Beverly Hale
Now this one is not science fiction. It is, very much, “S-F.” Mr. Hale was not concerned with how or why his strange events occurred, or with the logic of the situation — and neither am I.
Rationale here is not just unnecessary; it could have been ruinous. What Mr. Hale has done is to paint an alien viewpoint in an unknown perspective, and do it so graphically that (to return to the earlier metaphor), the resultant rainbow seems the natural way for light to be.
Of course, he has some special advantages. Possibly, this story could only have been written by an author who is both architect (by training) and anatomist (lecturer on, at the Art Students’ League) as well as a painter and poet of some years’ standing, and an editor, writer, and teacher of art. (Among other things, Curator of American Painting and Sculpture at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.)
Let me tell you about a dream I had and what happened afterward, because I think it all adds up.
You see, when this poet turned up a while back telling me he could live upstairs because Mrs. Stettheimer had said he could, there wasn’t much I could do. After all, Mr. Stettheimer had let us have the place free, as long as I painted him one picture a year. And upstairs wasn’t much anyway: it was where they used to keep the hay. There was an old sofa up there full of moths, and we gave him a blanket. He didn’t need a table, he said, because he never wrote anything down, he was extemporaneous. His name was Virgil Cranbrook; he came from Taos and San Francisco.
He wasn’t much trouble in the beginning. Mornings, Olivia used to pound on the ceiling with a mop handle and wake him up. Soon he would open the trap door, call for the stepladder and join us at breakfast. He took mescaline, or peyote, the drug that Huxley wrote about. He’d picked a supply of peyote buds near Taos and carried them around in his pockets. Every now and then he’d slice some with a razor blade, toast them in our toaster, and crumble them into powder. He’d put this powder in a jar of instant coffee, shake it up, and then at breakfast drink a couple of cups. After breakfast he would go upstairs and walk back and forth being extemporaneous.
The trouble was the moths up there couldn’t get used to him. He disturbed them. They’d crawl through the cracks in the ceiling and fly around my studio. Once so many of them got on a wet canvas of mine that they ruined it. I complained to Olivia, so she bought some moth balls and put them around upstairs. She also persuaded Virgil to carry some in his pockets along with the peyote buds.
Let me explain about Olivia. Thelonious Monk was playing at the Jazz Gallery one evening, and I found her next to me in the balcony. She had blank gray eyes, a thin body, and rather fat arms and legs. She wasn’t very attractive, but then I’m afraid I’m not either — and so far I haven’t been very successful. So we worked out an arrangement. She kept house well enough for me, and the nice thing about her was you didn’t know she was around when she was around.
The first thing that made me suspect there was something up between Virgil and Olivia were those whistles. Olivia and Virgil used to like to go to the beach, and one day they came back with a couple of tin whistles they’d found near some empty packages of Cracker Jack. Then they worked up a kind of game in the woods behind my studio — they’d separate from each other and start blowing the whistles. Ultimately they’d find each other and stop blowing. This used to go on while I was painting.
One morning Virgil came down to breakfast as usual, but after breakfast he didn’t go up again; he started declaiming right there — some crazy poem about what sex was like in outer space. Olivia sat on the bed and watched him. She was showing, I thought, a little too much appreciation. For me, this went on too long, so I told him to go upstairs or keep quiet; I wanted to paint. Since he wouldn’t pay any attention, I picked him up and threw him out the door. This wasn’t very hard to do because his co-ordination had been all shaken up by his morning coffee. Nevertheless, I handled him pretty roughly; he lost a couple of moth balls. Olivia looked irritated. I told them they could go out in the woods and blow their damn whistles, then slammed the door on both of them.
Right away they threw this stone, or rock, I guess you might call it, through the studio window. Outside, I heard them start up my car and head down the road.