Firefly. Part 17

She gazed at him without speaking for a moment. "Then she knows," she murmured.

"I guess so. I have to tell Mid, and get Cyrano to see her."

"But Cyrano is here to kill the monster."

He nodded, and went to the special phone that was only for Mid. none hesitated, then went to the kitchen.

He got the answering machine, as expected. "May Flowers has been raped and savaged by her husband," he reported. "She is in the cabin. She won't see a doctor, but we fear for her. We think Cyrano might help her." Then, after a pause, he added, "She is a good woman. none and I are going out to see her tonight, and Frank Tishner tomorrow. We want to help her. She put us together. We hope you will send Cyrano."

He set down the phone. That was as close as he could come to asking a favor of Mid on his own.

Then he went to check on none. She was busy packing a bag with groceries that May had brought her. "And does she have water there?" she asked.

"Yes."

"And anything to read?"

"No."

"Find something Mid won't mind."

He checked Mid's shelves. It was all right for him to read the books, because he was careful, but he wasn't sure about removing a volume from the house. Still, May worked for Mid too. He found a novel, The Shattered World by Michael Reaves; that was old enough to be expendable, he hoped, if she liked fantasy. If not, he would try another.

He returned with the volume to the kitchen. none was ready. "Now we go," she said.

They went. Before long they were at the cabin. "It's so much quicker by car!" none exclaimed. She had not complained, but he knew she was stiff from her arduous ride around the ranch. He watched covertly as she walked, to see whether any of that stiffness showed, but all he saw was how well formed her legs were in the jeans.

Inside they found May lying where he and Tishner had left her. none went immediately and knelt beside the mattress. "May, it's me, none!" she said.

May stirred. "Who?"

none evidently realized that she had slipped. "Jade Brown."

May blinked. "none-the way he's Geode?"

"Yes. Please, you are hurt and we want to help you. How do you feel?"

"Awful. I need to-" She broke off, looking at Geode.

"Take a walk, Geode," none said without looking at him.

Oh. The bathroom. He fetched a carrot and went out, but the ponies were gone. He walked out along the earthen pier, gazing at the slow gray curve of the Withlacoochee River, and at the stand of cypress trees growing at the verge. There were giant stumps of bygone cypress further in, five and six feet in diameter, but the current ones were hardly more than a foot at the point their trunks narrowed.

The river was divided here, with a series of marshy islands on which more cypress trees grew. Actually, the islands might be because of the cypress and the communities of creatures their ma.s.sive root systems supported. Cypress knees projected from the water, long a mystery to man. It seemed that the knees started as ordinary roots; if they were in aerated soil they grew downward, but if they were in water they grew upward until they found air, then grew down again. People had conjectured that they served as sources of air for the roots, or that sunlight on their surfaces signaled the seasons for the tree, but there was no conclusive evidence.

Geode had no problem with it. It was obvious to him that the primary purpose of the knees was to brace the tree in insubstantial soil. Ordinary trees could grasp the firm soil with their roots and be strongly anch.o.r.ed against their primary challenge, the wind. Wind put a lot of force against the extensive surface of a tree, and it was usually wind which finally brought down a tree, after it was dead and could no longer defend itself. They eased it by making their leaves flexible or needle-shaped, so that they offered little resistance to the pa.s.sing air, and their branches and even their trunks had enough give to allow them to bend with the wind and spring back undamaged after it pa.s.sed. But the heart of it was their root system, which held their vulnerable upper sections in place. Except when the soil was not solid, but muddy, or even covered by open water. That represented a challenge which defeated most trees. They could get oxygen down into the roots, just as they could get water up to the leaves; that wasn't the problem. But the anchorage had to be below, and mud was no good. Cypress reduced the surface it presented to the wind by being thin, almost like furred sticks growing up. But that wasn't enough. So the cypress used the outrigger system, sending its roots first out and then down, spreading them wider to gain leverage. Then the anchorage of the mud sufficed; the membrane of the rootlets themselves firmed it, and the leverage of their spread braced the tree despite the softness of the soil. How did they know when to do this, and how far to reach out? That was where the genius of the system showed: the farther underwater a root started, the farther it had to grow to reach the surface. Since it grew at an angle, that meant it went farther out. Once it was high enough so that the seasonal fluctuations of the water level never covered it entirely, it made its turn and grew down until it found the soil. Then it made the best anchorage it could, in the manner of any tree, reaching deeply and spreading out its feeder rootlets. It had become a flying b.u.t.tress whose placement provided the leverage the larger tree required.

Geode liked all trees, but he had special respect for the cypress. Trees were not smart in the manner of men, but they were geniuses in the manner of trees. They could grow in terrain that excluded other trees, so they had little compet.i.tion. They could grow in dry soil too, and did, without their knees, but there they were competing with the myriad other species adapted more perfectly to that dry land, and were at a disadvantage, and tended to be squeezed out. So, in the larger sense, they owed their prosperity and perhaps their survival to their knees. If the water rose, owing perhaps to a shift in the river or the pattern of rainfall, other trees would die, but the cypress would survive. That deserved respect.

If the cypress were lost, the ecology of the waterfront and swamp regions would change. All the species of fish and insects that existed in the protection of those knees would perish. There might be types never discovered by man, hiding there, that would be rendered extinct if their habitat were eliminated. Geode didn't need to know exactly what they were, he just needed to know they had their fair chance to live their lives and do their things. His mission in life had come upon him slowly, but now it was clear: to protect the wildlife that remained on the planet, any way he could. Mid gave him that chance, here at the Middle Kingdom, and he would carry through.

That led him to thought of the monster, the firefly. Was it a wild creature? If so, he should protect it too. But his news of it had summoned Cyrano, who was here to kill it. Was this right? Yet if the monster lived, and continued preying on people, there would come a ma.s.sive monster hunt, and they could burn down the entire forest and dredge the river and fill the swamp, just to get rid of the monster. Then the firefly would truly have brought the fire! The Middle Kingdom would become a wasteland. So it seemed that if the monster wouldn't go away, it had to be killed, to protect the ranch and all the natural creatures it harbored. Geode didn't like it, but he appreciated the logic of it.

He saw a ripple at the verge of the water. There was an alligator, moving smoothly in quest of prey. One thing about the alligators: they made intruders cautious. Except for the poachers, who wanted their hides for expensive shoes. Geode would prefer to see the hides of the poachers made into shoes, or stretched out on boards in the fashion of rattlesnake skins. He visualized an alligator talking to a rattlesnake in front of a board and boots: "You should have seen the fight he put up!"

In a sense, the firefly was doing that, turning the tables on the poachers. A hunter had sneaked onto the property and become the prey. It was simple justice. Geode couldn't help liking the firefly, some.

He walked back to the cabin. A pair of wrens poked in the gra.s.s beside it, indefatigably looking for bugs. He liked wrens too; they were bold little birds, almost tame, and if a door was left open they would come in and explore. Once one had been caught inside; he had had to explain to it that this was an accident, and it had forgiven him. When he split wood, preparing it for the fireplace at such time as Mid might arrive, the wrens would poke about the billets, seeking the bugs dislodged from the bark. That was just as well, because bugs were no good inside the house. They had no way to forage or hide, so they died. It was better that they live or die cleanly, nature's way.

He knocked on the door, in case the women weren't finished. none came to let him in. "I don't know how much is physical and how much psychological, but she's not well. We must do something for her."

Geode was willing, but had no idea what to offer. He followed her into the main chamber, where May now sat up on the mattress, propped against the wall. It was true: she did not look good.

"We brought you a book," he said, knowing this was inadequate. "It's a good fantasy novel." He had been carrying it all this time, unconscious of it. "The Shattered World."

Her dull eyes swiveled to cover him. "Thank you, Geode. It sounds appropriate."

There was a silence.

"Maybe I could tell you a story," none said. "If you aren't up to reading."

Surprise lighted May's features momentarily. "You tell stories?"

none was embarra.s.sed. "No one ever cared to listen."

"I am a captive audience," May said. But she smiled.

"I will tell you of none." none reached up and loosened her hair, shaking it out into an auburn ma.s.s.

Geode was interested. He sat on the other mattress and watched her. And was duly impressed.

* 20 - NONE WAS A nymph of Mount Ida. Like a hamadryad, who was a spirit of a particular tree, she was a spirit of the mountain, immortal as long a she remained with it but unable to live apart from it. Mount Ida was, in an overwhelming sense, her mother.

Mount Ida, as none knew it, was a many-splendored region. a.s.sociated with it were misty glens and ridges covered by pines and flower-covered slopes. A stream coursed down it, felling through cataracts toward the aegean Sea. For centuries none roamed the protective recesses of the mountain, knowing neither joy nor sorrow, for she had no experience of the mortal realm.

Then a small party came to Mount Ida. A nurse brought a wrapped parcel and laid it on a ledge, exposed to the sun. The party departed. none, curious, went to see what they had left-and was astonished.

It was a mortal baby boy! Apparently he had been left here to die, unwanted. But he was a marvelously pretty baby, and she had ruth on him, and picked him up and carried him to the home of a shepherd who lived at the foot of the mountain. She could not let herself be seen by an adult, for adults did not believe in mountain spirits, so she left the baby at the door and faded away. But she watched from cover, and saw the shepherd's wife come out and find the baby.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "It is the answer to my prayers! Zeus has granted me a baby!" Then none knew that she had done the right thing, for the woman would take good care of the foundling.

Thereafter none watched, for she had touched a mortal person and thereby a.s.sumed a bit of mortality herself, while yielding part of her immortality to the baby. She had not realized that this would be the case, for she had been innocent of the ways of mortality, but gradually she came to understand. The baby had been fated to die, and she had saved him not merely by carrying him physically to the shepherd's home, but by yielding part of her immortality to him, counteracting his fate. That part of her nature which enabled him to live also attached her to him, for he was now part of her as much as she was part of him.

The shepherd called him Alexander, and he grew in due course to handsome manhood. This happened quickly, by none's terms, for to her twenty years was but an instant. He became a shepherd, and spent much time on the mountain slopes, and she watched him constantly, drawn by the part of her that was him. She saw that though he was breathtakingly handsome, he was shallow of character, having little interest in anything other than his immediate pleasure. She a.s.sumed that this was normal for his kind, and this did not surprise her. It was, after all, the way of mountain spirits, for they had no souls.

One day he was injured in an accident occasioned by his own carelessness, and his leg was bleeding. none came then and put her hand on the injury, and it healed.

"Who are you?" he inquired.

"I am none, nymph of the mountain."

"What magic is this?"

"No magic, only the natural healing I do for injured animals. I did not want you to hurt." For though she had little understanding of the human condition, none hurt when any creature of the mountain did. Thus her act of healing was as much to relieve her own distress as to relieve his.

"Oh. Thank you." He got up and went about his business.

Then he noticed something. He looked back at her, verifying it, and called to her. She could not resist him, and came to him. He was clothed, in the manner of mortals, but she was not, in the manner of nymphs. Her charms were those of youth and health, for a nymph never ages after her maturity. Her waist was small, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were full and upstanding, her legs were marvels of rondure and symmetry, and her auburn hair flowed down about her like a living cloak that nevertheless concealed nothing. He gazed upon her, and into her eyes, which were as green as the verdure of the slopes of Mount Ida, and he took her in his arms, and she could not resist the lure of his visage and his mortality. And so it was that he brought her down from the high slopes, to the low slopes, and married her, and lay with her, or perhaps it was the other way around, for his adoptive parents were strict about the amenities, and she committed the folly of loving him.

For every human emotion costs a nymph more of her immortality. none lost some when she had ruth on him as a baby, and more when she loved him, but she could not help herself. He swore his love for her, and seemed happy, yet there was a mystery about him, and the unraveling of that mystery was to ruin their life together.

For Alexander wanted to know his origin. He knew he was adopted, and he was dissatisfied with the bucolic life, for there was too much honest work entailed, so he hoped for some way out. He asked none if she knew, and she discovered that she did. She had not realized before that she knew, but she was of the mountain, and the mountain knew many things, and it spoke through her. "Yes, you are Paris, son of Priam, king of Ilios, and Hecuba, his queen."

He was amazed. "Then I am a prince! But how came I here?"

Again she learned the answer as she spoke. "Hecuba dreamed she was to bring forth a firebrand. This meant that the child she carried would bring destruction to Priam's house. Priam sired fifty children, so could spare one, and they sent a nurse to expose the newborn one on the mountain, that he might die without actually being killed." Then she added from her own memory, "But I saw you there, and took you to the shepherd, who raised you as his own. Now you are grown, and you are indeed a prince."

"Well, then, I must go to Ilios and claim my heritage!" he exclaimed.

"But what of me?" she asked. "I cannot leave Mother Ida!"

"n.o.body asked you to," he said. "Prepare me a pack with staples, for I will set off on the morrow."

none was saddened, but she loved him and wanted him to be happy, so she prepared the pack. That night he made love to her three times, because it occurred to him it might be several days before he encountered another woman, and in the morning he set off for Ilios, a city to the northwest. none mourned to see him go, but hid her feeling so as not to disturb him. She was learning the human condition.

A week later he returned. "They welcomed me!" he said. "They had long since gotten rid of that false prophet and regretted throwing me away. I have reclaimed my position."

"Then why did you return?" she asked naively.

"No woman there looked as good as you do."

She blushed, in the mortal fashion, taking it as a compliment. He promptly threw her down and had his pleasure of her, and three more times during the night, catching up on the rest of the week. She was happy again. She was regretful only that she was unable to bear him a child. But that was the province of mortal women. She was not yet sufficiently mortal.

Then trouble came, deceptively, from afar. The G.o.ddesses had a contest to ascertain who was the most beautiful among them, and decided that it should be judged by the handsomest mortal man: Paris of Ilion, the city otherwise known as Troy.

So it was that three formidable G.o.ddesses came to Paris at Mount Ida and required that he choose which one among them should be awarded the Golden Apple of victory. none knew immediately that this was likely disaster, and tried to warn Paris, but he was too flattered by the attention to heed her.

It started after a pa.s.sing storm, when the rain was fading and the clouds were dispersing. A rainbow appeared, spanning the peak of the mountain, brighter and richer than any seen before. Paris and none gazed at it, entranced, fascinated by its surrealistic intensity.

Then a part of it detached, and formed a smaller rainbow within the arch of the first, closer to where they sat, and then a yet smaller one that seemed almost close enough to touch. The colors swirled and coalesced and became the rainbow-hued skirt of a young woman garbed in the manner of distant Crete. Her feet and b.r.e.a.s.t.s were bare, and her skirt was horizontally tiered, and her black hair was bound about with golden chains. She walked toward them, her toes not quite touching the ground, and in her hand she carried the shining gold Apple.

"Iris, messenger of the G.o.ds during discord!" none exclaimed, recognizing her. For Hermes was the messenger when the G.o.ds intended harmony.

But Paris's eyes were on the visitor's decolletage, and on the Apple, and he had no concern for the implications of her presence. "What may I do for you, lovely creature?" he inquired eagerly.

Iris stopped before him. "Take this Apple, Paris. You must award it to the most fair among G.o.ddesses."

He took the precious fruit. The Golden Apple was far heavier than a normal one, and more l.u.s.trous, and he wished he could keep it for himself, but realized that the G.o.ds would not permit this. "Must I then return it to you so soon?" he asked gallantly.

But Iris was immune to such blandishment. "Three contend for the honor," she said. "Behold, here is the first." She broke into bands of color, which swirled briefly and faded out.

A brilliant peac.o.c.k flew toward him, landing and spreading its tail so that light splayed out as if from a prism. A golden cloud formed above it, and lowered majestically to the ground, obscuring the bird. Then it dissipated, and its mists formed into towering columns supporting a magnificent pavilion girt with colorful murals of animals. In its center was a golden throne, and on that throne sat a beautiful woman, resplendent in queenly robes whose every embroidery was the lifework of the most skilled artisans.

none recognized her, because the mountain did. She was Hera, queen of the G.o.ds, daughter of the t.i.tan Kronos and granddaughter of Ouranos, who was the sky itself, and sister and wife to Zeus, the king of the G.o.ds. After her had been named the ancient Heraean Games for women, after which the more recent and inferior Olympic Games for men were patterned.

"Give me the Apple, Paris," Hera said, "and I will give you riches beyond measure, power such as your father never knew, and greatness before all mortals."

Paris held the Golden Apple, sorely tempted. But he remembered that there were three contestants, and it behooved him at least to see the other two before accepting the gift the queen offered.

Aware of this, Hera retreated some distance, and the next appeared. This was a warrior-maiden wearing silver armor and carrying a spear. Yet so cunningly were silver slippers, skirt, cuira.s.s, and helmet fashioned that she was strikingly beautiful too. This was Athene, G.o.ddess of war, handicraft, and wisdom, after whom the great Parthenon was named. "Yield me the Apple," she said, "and I will give you prowess in battle, and knowledge, and wisdom to use your powers well. I will enable you to know yourself and to follow the right course always, becoming a champion of the way of law and freedom, standing always upright. Your reputation shall be as fair as your face, your heart courageous and pure."

"Give it to her!" none cried, recognizing that this would replace Paris's greatest weaknesses with strengths. But Paris's attention was more on her firmness of limb and torso than on her words; he had never been overly keen on rightness as opposed to self-interest. He did not answer.

Then Athene made a strategic retreat and gave the vanguard position to the third G.o.ddess, who now approached in the form of a truly beautiful woman. This was Aphrodite, born of the foam that gathered about the severed parts of the emasculated G.o.d Ouranos when his son Kronos castrated him with a sickle. She was therefore the G.o.ddess of erotic love. The Babylonians had known her as Ishtar and worshiped her with ritual prost.i.tution. She was the one none feared the most.

Aphrodite walked slowly toward Paris, and pythons would have envied the way her hips undulated as she strode, and her bosom heaved with rippling swells like those of the hungry sea. Her hair floated like the foam of her origin down about her pearly shoulders and the upper contours of her phenomenal b.r.e.a.s.t.s, showing now one curve and then another, each more seductive than its neighbor. She walked on violets where there had been none before, and her dress was of such perfect silk that it glistened like a second skin. From her rose the scent of ambrosia, the elixir of life itself, the food of the G.o.ds that conferred immortality.

"Judge me, Paris, as I am," she said, and with a gesture of exquisite aplomb she threw off her garb and stood before him as the most perfect of women. "And for your trouble I shall give you the fairest and most loving mortal woman."

Paris, blinded by the beauty of her body and her promise, extended his hand in the manner of a somnambulist, presenting her the Golden Apple. Queenly Hera's visage clouded with affront, and wise Athene shook her head at his folly and retreated. Aphrodite accepted the Apple, leaned forward to kiss him once on the lips, and said, "She is Helen of Sparta. I will guide you to her acquisition. Speak my name when you are ready for that challenge." Then she turned and walked away, her rear view as generous and appealing as her front view, for those who liked that type. none didn't care for it, but Paris remained mesmerized until she disappeared from the bower.

"O Paris, my love, go not to Sparta!" none pleaded, for she borrowed from the mountain a certain knowledge of how things were, and knew that nothing good would come of this. "You can only involve yourself and your country in ruin!"

"Tell me of Helen," he replied, indifferent to her concern.

Dutifully, none drew on Mother Ida's knowledge and spoke of Helen. "One day Leda, the lovely young wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta, arguably the leading city of Greece, walked beside the water and was spied there by Zeus, king of the G.o.ds. Smitten by her beauty, he approached her for a liaison. But Leda was a virtuous woman, and rejected his advance. Enraged by such astonishing treatment, Zeus a.s.sumed the form of a great swan and attacked her. He beat at her with his wings as she fled, and caused her to fall; then he landed on her and drove his bill at her face. When she spread her legs in an effort to scramble up, he forged between them and ravished her. His l.u.s.t abated, he flew away and forgot the matter. Leda was too ashamed to confess to her husband that she had been raped by a swan, so she concealed her horror and pretended that nothing had happened. But she had conceived by Zeus, who was the most potent of males in any form, and in due course laid two eggs (at that point her husband may have been suspicious), from one of which hatched Helen. Rather than allow a scandal, Tyndareus claimed the children as his own, and Helen grew into the very perfection of womanhood and married Menelaus, who became king of Sparta. There she remains today, and soon enough he will see about begetting a child or two upon her, hoisting that they are not birthed as eggs."

"Then I must go quickly to rescue her!" Paris exclaimed chivalrously. "Aphrodite! I am ready!"

The G.o.ddess appeared, smiling knowingly, and extended her hand to him. "No!" none wailed, but she was helpless. Paris took the hand, and there was a flare of light, and when it faded, none was alone in the bower.

"O Mother Ida!" she cried to the mountain, as reported by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. "Hearken ere I die!" For she was dangerously close to mortality now, having loved too well and foolishly. "Paris swore his love to me a thousand times!" But now he was gone.

And so it was that Paris went to Greece, and beguiled the beauteous Helen, and abducted her and carried her away to Troy. The Greeks were so affronted that they gathered together a great army and besieged Troy for ten years, finally overcoming it by trickery. They were in fact part of the effort known to historians as the Peoples of the Sea, whose depredations weakened the civilized Hitt.i.te and Egyptian empires and were a nuisance to Crete. Dark ages were to fall in these cultured regions-all because none had saved a baby who should have been allowed to die. All this she learned from the mountain, too late; she could have known it in time to prevent it, but she had never thought to inquire.

Paris earned the contempt of all who knew him by his shallowness and cowardice, and Helen turned out to be similarly shallow and vain. The entire effort was for nothing. Paris tried to hide as the Greeks took the city at last, but he was wounded by a poisoned arrow shot by Philoctetes, who had been laid up for ten years by a serpent bite but who possessed the magic arrows of Heracles that were required for the finale. Even so, Paris managed to escape to the countryside-some hint he might have garbed himself as an old woman to hide-and came again to none, beseeching her to use her nymphly healing magic to preserve his life.

But by this time none was pretty upset with him. It had, after all, been ten years. She hardened her heart and refused. His servants took him away. Then, just like a mortal woman, she reconsidered, and repented her att.i.tude, and agreed to heal him. But it was too late, and he died. They laid his body at her feet, and she was consumed by remorse. She knew then that her own death was soon upon her, for too much of her had been lost with her false lover. What now for foolish none?

* 21 - MAY WAS OVERCOME by emotion. "Oh, none, was it like that for you? I never realized!"

"It is only a story," none demurred.

"You called your husband Paris," Geode said, similarly moved. "And he had an affair with Helen. Now Paris is dead."

"But that doesn't mean you have to die!" May said.

But none just glanced at her, and down. "We must return to the house," she murmured. "Geode is supposed to be there, to keep watch. But we will return first thing in the morning, to be sure you're all right."