Plumbing the depths of the prejudice in my soul, I came upon an unpleasant piece of debris, like when I once stirred a cup of tea with my finger and picked up a stray leaf: I didn’t know why I hated Blacky or, indeed, if I hated her at all.
I decided to enumerate the reasons in my mind: number one, two, three, and so forth.
Looking at her was one thing, but thinking about her was another. I would rather have done the former, as the latter made for a tight belly.
Without skin, Blacky would have been attractive. Hmm. There was that slight protruding of her rear. Some of them had odd hip structure. Too leggy. Bosom too high. Head elongated. Why? Genes, naturally.
That last conclusion brought me no satisfaction, reminded me of pants, inside which all sorrow resided. People ought to have been more fastidious about where they dropped their jeans/ genes.
I think maybe I’ll die tomorrow.
Blacky’s grin? She had good teeth, but I didn’t care for pink-gray gums. The palms of her hands were all wrong. Off-shade. Another thing I never took to was the whites of her eyes, because they flashed red. You could spot colored right off that way, like for instance the famous movie star who said he was Mexican. His wicked eyes gave him away, with their streaks of red.
I didn’t feel right when I called Blacky a nigger. It embarrassed me. She didn’t deserve it. Nobody ever persecuted me for anything. I am—I was a Wasp: you know, one of those people who didn’t know what they were and were proud of it. (Relieved?) A chunk of potato in a stew; a little fish in a big pond.
As for us rednecks, we’re okay, we’re more American than any of you foreigners. My folks brought me up to be a good little girl and never even told me what a Jew was. I grew and went around with a frown because people were so concerned with names. “Levy? You say Levy?” Berg-stein-wald, hell, I learned, but I still had to be hit over the head with a name before I recognized it as anything but homo sap. My talent, you realize, lay in the two big dark balls above my nose. I couldn’t hear anything but homo sap, but I could spot an ape a mile away, whether he was peeling a banana or not.
I wish all those apes were around now. (Without an equal complement of rednecks? I don’t know.)
Blacky opens her mouth and you can hear the collard greens squeezing through her teeth. Where in the hell did that godawful accent originate?
Did you know their sex organs were blue? S’fact. Whence comes this sacrilege? We don’t need or want blue but in the sky. Human beings have this and that. Anything else is an added upon, and we question who did it.
I don’t believe in God. Never did. Well, when I was little. They said, “Don’t, give, sweat, give, suffer, give, cry, give, give, give.” I stopped listening when I realized they were a carbon copy of the government, or vice versa.
Blacky, you and I, we are both lost. Will you cry tomorrow when I get killed? No, I imagine you’ll do like the psychs used to say was normal and sensible and virtuous. You’ll cower in a corner and be glad because it isn’t you.
I ask you to analyze that bit of indecency: “Better her than me.” Never mind God, or what price valor, or what does it profit a man if he . . .
At the time I thought all those things, I was curled around Blacky’s back, keeping it warm, while she kept my front warm. It was chilly spring outside.
It isn’t true that they stink. Blacky shivered and moved closer. My back was plastered against a wall colder than a witch’s ninny. (I don’t like vulgarity, but sometimes use it without thinking, as I’m a ridge runner who never ran fast enough to get away from it one hundred percent.)
Nigger, nigger on the wall, who’s the fairest of the two of us? Which one of us represents humanity? Poor little lambs, we are victims of our archetypes. How deep does the blood have to run before the subconscious lets go of that old survival rope? A foot deep in low gutters? Don’t ask me. I have a strong stomach. Ask the nigger in my arms. Sometimes I think she is almost all ape. Cry? As she laughs. All the time. How high is her IQ? Statistically speaking, that is, in comparison with mine, well, neither of us had the brains to find our way out of the maze, not for weeks. (You should be alive to try this dilly. Einstein would give up after a year.) My roomie and I took a stab at it every morning before breakfast. And who ever said “Straw for the ox and wheat for the man”? I ate straw, or anything else that didn’t break my teeth. But every morning, Blacky and I were forced to run and climb and crawl, and we had lots of energy because we dined so well.
I got out of Blacky’s clutches, climbed from the bed and practiced walking on my hands. It wouldn’t do me any good, though, because I’d made up my mind that today I was going to get through the maze with no assistance and that it was going to be the last day I acted like a clown.
Maze: Like a honeycomb, glittering white and yellow, glistening as a sticky surface will, a little like frozen crystals on ice cream. The floor didn’t feel sticky to my touch. My hands sank into it a fraction and I experienced a sickening sensation. I didn’t lose my balance, but then I never did.
There were thousands of holes in the walls, each large enough to accommodate a body, and each having no end, or so it seemed, besides which, a person inside one of those holes could end up getting eaten.
The single door in our wooden shack led into the maze, and we couldn’t dig our way out of the shack, having nothing but our teeth and fingernails. Woman is a piece of meat. Note I didn’t say man. We, the nigger and I, may be the only women left, and what would all you studs who are inseminating flowers have to say to that? You let us down. You got yourselves slaughtered and who have we to depend on now? As you depended upon bigger men and men in positions of power, even so we women depended on you. Everyone did it, it was no crime, for this was a symbiotic universe and not even light traveled on its own ticket. We are, were, together. You lost. I cry to think how you tried. You don’t know about Blacky and me. What would you do if you knew? I mean, illogic, if drawn to infinite length, can make a mind go bananas. That’s it. What’s the point of two girls surviving?
Don’t interrupt, mind, I’m looking at that maze.
I tried crawling into a hole, any hole, got ten yards and the thing reached out little yellow suckers and started tasting me. I scrambled backward and got out of that hole and tried another. How would you like getting tasted every day of your life, a dozen times a day?
Every morning Blacky and I woke up to the noise of the maze, and talk about a thing getting ready for a meal, even the floor became active. Blacky and I hopped, were experts by then, and we continued to hop until we finally saw the one inactive hole in the entire joint, and in we dived, fighting to get there first, and we crawled like hell to the end of the hole, and we dropped out and there we were, on stage in the Council Chamber, and right away we began our acrobatic act, and that was why we didn’t die. Because we had good balance.
So I was just spouting when I swore I’d get through the thing with no help and I was braying when I said I wouldn’t be a clown anymore. I’d do anything to keep from getting killed.
What would you do if razors suddenly started raining from heaven one day? Likely you would get sliced up. Not just likely —you did get sliced up. I didn’t. Talk about a mob, there must have been three hundred people on the block, gawking at the sky. When that many bodies began to fall apart, there wasn’t much space left that could be described as unlittered.
I was in the middle of my act when it happened. Soap-box stuff. Fifth Avenue, standing on my hands on the sidewalk. More natural to me than being on my feet. Everybody started dying in a hurry. I froze solid, I did. My hands grew red to my wrists. I examined my environment with my crazy eyes while my body remained stationary.
They had good eyesight, spied me standing the wrong way, down on the ground, otherwise they would have showered me with spears, along with the others.
The red was nearly halfway to my elbows. Something closed around my ankle and I was hauled into the sky. I had me a slow, slow jaunt through the countryside of NYC. Above me hovered a white bug the size of a truck. Shiny streamers hung from it like Christmas ornaments, and one of these held me suspended.
Occasionally I raised my head to look at the sky. Over the Empire State Building a huge white bug drifted, and from its tubular rear poured a stream of eggs. They bounced when they hit the streets. They were white as they dropped but red when they bounced. The bug covered ten blocks with eggs, and after they stopped bouncing they lay and soaked in the inert nourishment. Over New York I flew, and witnessed my species being cut to ribbons for fodder.
* * * *
Into the Council Chamber we two crawled every day, and the bugs loved us. Blacky said once in a while that they only loved our sweat, otherwise why did they carefully lick us clean after we tired ourselves out? It made me mad when she said that.
“You stupid nigger.”
“That wasn’t necessary.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Up yours.”
“The same to you and more of it.”
I wished it was anyone but me getting licked. The queen was beautiful and big, and there is no need to mention that she was also terrifying. The tip of her tongue, just the tip, was longer than I am. I never knew when she would tire of tasting me and swallow me. But maybe they didn’t eat meat, once they hatched.
The tongue slid down my back, making me shiver; it ran into my hair to play, fondly nuzzled my silky armpits, bored into my navel. I stayed balanced on my hands and tried to stop shivering; the tongue sucked my leg too hard and some hair went. I think she liked me. Not my taste. My soul. The thing God goofed while making.
“Blacky.”
“Shut up. They can hear. And don’t call me that.”
“They can’t hear,” I said. “And they’re stupid.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why are we getting licked like a pair of lollipops? If they’re dumb, why are they the bosses?”
“I don’t think I can stand this much longer. There’s such a thing as private—”
“Shut up and stand still.”
Being a nigger, she was one up on me in obedience. Her black body shone like grease, unnaturally so, as if something was coming off the queen’s tongue and sticking to her. Jesus, maybe we were being coated with a layer of egg seeds, and maybe the seeds were sinking into our pores.
“Blacky.”
“Don’t be a jerk. She eats vegetables and that shine is oil. She already laid her eggs. She brought them with her.”
“From where?”
“God knows.”
“He doesn’t.”
“Well, we know. They came out of the ground.”
* * * *
In our wooden shack, I grabbed Blacky around the belly and tried to steal her warmth. It didn’t matter if she froze, as long as I didn’t.
Where did everybody go? What happened, for instance, to the horses that lived here ten thousand years ago? What became of those other species that should have thrived but instead went away in a hurry to oblivion?
Down under the ground lie the eggs of Valene. So flexible are they that it takes a special kind of force to perforate them. They can’t be opened by, say, a section of earth shifting against them. Valene’s eggs flatten out and slide like fluid until they are free. The very pressure assists them in their flight toward open space. A rock falling on one of these eggs does no damage unless it stabs with a sharp edge, and this rapidly, before the shell begins its automatic cringing and sliding activity.
Say you dropped an egg in a field ten thousand years ago. A caveman who had survived the period of your reign came upon the egg and tried to destroy it. He was too demoralized to succeed and so he finally went away and left the egg in the field. Eventually the thing became buried. Ten millennia went by, while the egg lay like a lump of clay, moving not at all, except away from pressure. But one day the egg behaves differently. It swells a bit before a needle-sharp antenna penetrates it from the inside. A child of Valene emerges and begins a patient journey to the earth’s surface. It can bore through almost anything, though it prefers the easy way, and so it will detour around solid rock rather than go through it. Water presents no obstacle to Valene’s child. In fact, the innumerable underground wells and lakes are the reason so many of the monarch’s offspring arrive topside so quickly.
A starving Valenian will leap upon the first moving thing it sees. Animal or vegetable, it matters not, provided the youngster is able to penetrate the organism with its teeth and thereafter swallow pieces of it. A meal is a meal, and a Valenian is omnivorous, and practically anything will make it smack its lips in satisfaction. Of course, if you happen to be either of a pair of little gals named Blacky and Whitey, the Valenian won’t have a craving for your body except in an indirect sort of way.
Was that last part obscure? Well, the eyes of Valene’s child are drawn like magnets to beauty, after which it experiences a visceral blast.
Still obscure? Hmm. Consider a creature that digs pleasure, trips the light fantastic as a way of life, sucks without reservation when it is rewarding, and defines “reward” as anything that feels good. Know anybody like that? Of course you do. We. Us. Valenians are like people—hedonists at heart.
Valene was a big bug-mammal whose fur was whiter than snow. She had the wings of a bird, tail of a bunny, belly of a porcupine, ears like a hound and head like a grasshopper. So short were her legs that she might as well not have had any. The reason why I called her a bug was because her body was in three segments and she also had six legs and four wings.
Long ago, Valene courted a partly mammalian creature, a maguma, who went by the name of Mattu. This was before there were any people on earth. Mattu was scared of his children because they hatched from eggs and were bigger than he. He tried to kill them and Valene. The babies killed him instead, and Valene gathered all magumas into an open pen and slaughtered them, except for the handsomest male. She kept him as a lover. His name was also Mattu. He had a furry white coat, long tail, padded feet, short legs, long snout and ears. A healthy stud, he was easily domesticated and all went well until dying time for the Valenians approached. Because Valene loved Mattu, and for a few other reasons, she commanded that he be treated with chemicals so that he would never die. As for herself, she would go the way of all flesh. Though she winced at the thought of another Valene having her lover, she needed to answer the call of her kind and go down into the grave with her comrades.
Mattu was given special transfusions that made his pituitary halt its normal processes and lie dormant in preparation for regeneration. He looked as if he were dying. His body shrank to a fraction of its former size, his eyes turned rheumy, he became senile and foolish. His body servants stuffed him into an egg sac, poked a feeding tube down his throat, laced the opening securely and transported the egg out over the ocean, where it was dropped. The tube in Mattu’s throat fed him a solution that placed him in suspended animation. At the end of ten thousand years, the call of the wild reached his ears. His pituitary flickered to life and so did all of him.
The next generation of Valenians was pleased with Mattu. He was a good lover to the new Valene. However, being mortal, he needed to die at the end of his normal life span, which had been considerably shortened by the treatment. The alteration of such an essential part of his existence made him extremely argumentative and he turned out to be a far more earnest griper than his ancestor.
* * * *
In this dispensation of time, the President of the United States was the first human to be killed by a Valenian. It wasn’t part of any plan of Valene’s to have such an important person killed first. To her he didn’t even exist. It simply happened that way. She wasn’t responsible for the places where the children of her predecessor chose to surface after their long sleep.
The President was walking his dog on the White House grounds, and the dog attacked something in a clump of shrubbery. The something was a Valenian, still groggy, sore from having crawled upward through a mile or so of clay, and hungry. The thing ate the dog, the President and a bodyguard who rushed across the yard when he heard their cries.
Most of the Valenians surfaced on the North American continent. They always would as long as the queen-egg was secreted in Old Faithful. The heat didn’t bother it, and it had sunk too deeply into the mud bottom to be belched out.
Ten thousand years ago, the world’s medicine men were called upon to get rid of the Valenians with magic. This time, in the twentieth century, scientists were handed the task. They did as well or as poorly as their counterparts of old.
Many people provided meals for the furry giants, but so did a large number of cows, horses, sheep, et cetera. In the meantime, the armies of the world plotted. How could they kill an enemy who was in every city?
The egg in which the nest resided finally hatched in Rockefeller Center, and the world thought victory was at last in sight. They believed the Valenians were like bees and that the nest was necessary for the bugs’ survival.
While the governments planned their strategy for dropping an atom bomb on the nest, Queen Valene was making love to Mattu and growing more pregnant hourly.
Man was too slow in making up his mind. Time ran out. Valene prepared to lay her eggs. The first was carefully dropped into Old Faithful, and it was the largest of all. In ten millennia it would produce the new Valene.
From the geyser, Valene flew to a heavily populated area, which happened to be New York City. Her eggs flowed from her in a deluge. No more would the Valenians eat human flesh. Only the eggs would grow fat on such nourishment. From now on, the Valenians would be strict vegetarians.
* * * *
Dalia was the second-born of the old Valene, a sweet-natured specimen who never let me out of her sight, except when I was sleeping. She had a deep concavity in her skull where it connected with her backbone, and every day after Blacky and I went through our acrobatic act for the queen’s entertainment, I climbed up Dalia’s side and seated myself in the depression in her head.
She crawled from the nest, spread her wings and flew over the countryside of NYC. I beat her with my fists whenever I wanted her to do something.
We were on the hunt for survivors, and this time we intended to go a far distance. Dalia was always hungry, like me, so whenever she spied an orchard or a garden, she grounded and we had a snack.
It took us twenty hours to get to Africa, and we made two stops to eat. At last we parked on a mountain ridge above a campsite of jungle bunnies and slept until morning.
The natives were restless at sunup. For a thousand years Whitey had been after them to join civilization. They weren’t supposed to hunt with spears or live like savages. Of course, what happened as a result of this was that the niggers didn’t really live at all but were spectators to Whitey’s life. In the meantime, they lost their spears and ate what Whitey tossed them.
At any rate, this morning, civilization was gone. Valene and her slaves had demolished the status quo. This bunch of niggers that Dalia and I watched were restless because their stomachs hurt.
They had the oldest member of the tribe for breakfast, after which they griped because he had made tough chewing. These were educated niggers, spoke English and had up-to-date catalogs in their outhouses. During the gab session, some old buck suggested that a virgin be on the menu from then on. He put up a good argument, concluded by pointing out that a virgin was like a tasty dessert, you could have it and eat it too. This served as a reminder to all that they hadn’t had any dessert after breakfast, so every girl in the group started running. The last Dalia and I saw of the tribe, they were hauling down on some young critter.
My people were doing the same thing in NYC. On top of buildings, in alleys, in offices. With no fire, more times than not. They ate a lot of black meat. I saw them eating rats, too, but they didn’t care what color they were.
I saw a crippled man walking down the street. So did a fellow on top of a building. He slid down a rope and, knife in hand, approached the crippled man. From the buildings poured a horde of hungries. They took the fellow’s knife from him and used it to parcel him out.
I saw a child walking down the street. It was the same story. This time three men tried to jump her. The meal was three times more substantial.
Didn’t anybody eat vegetables? Well, where in NYC were any? A human didn’t dare go in a food store, for there was likely to be a Valenian dining in it.
I saw a horse running down the street, a pack of human savages chasing it with a net. I gave Dalia a whack on the head to gain her attention, squeezed her neck with my legs and guided her to a spot over the savages.
“Let ‘em have it,” I told her, and she did.
Her belly sent an avalanche of spears to the ground. By and by the horse came back and ate half of somebody. Pretty soon he got sick and died. I had Dalia let go with a circle of spears around his body. No one bothered that horse, not that day or any other.
* * * *
I was no longer afraid of the Valenians or the nest or anything else. Blacky and I didn’t sleep in the shack; now we slept in a hole in the nest. The Council Chamber held no terror for us. It was simply a room in the nest, a big hollow area where Valene and her Council rested most of the time.
Mattu was a gorgeous creature. An orator by nature, he could spout for hours, and after I learned the language, I argued with him.
“Our life span is so short and we have killed so many.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You aren’t abstract enough.”
“Should I try to pretend that it hasn’t happened?” he said, a bitter light in his eyes.
“That isn’t a bad idea.”
The rulers in the Chamber stirred, stood on their short legs.
“Come before me,” said Valene.
I hopped onto my hands and she had fun licking me all over.
“Mama, don’t do too much. Leave some of her for me.” This was Dalia speaking.
“You love her?” said Foster-mama Valene.
“Very much.”
“You would take my pleasure?” said Monarch Valene.
“Never.”
“Very well, you can have a lick.”
While this went on, Blacky crouched in a corner and whimpered.
“Get the hell over here,” I said. “You think I can take this much goosing all the time?”
“Don’t kid me,” she sniveled, “you love it.”
“What’s wrong with being a hedonist? There’s no God. If there’s no best, there’s no worst.”
“You been getting Dalia to kill people. How many do you think are left?”
“What does it matter?”
“Nothing, except that you’re human.”
“Pooh-pooh. I’m here, they’re there. Where’s the resemblance?”
“You lousy atheist.”
I laughed. “With those words you explained reality. I can’t see why there was ever a fuss made about it. No good, no bad, no great, no small, nothing, no nothing other than what I do, do, do, do, do—”
“Shut up!”
* * * *
“Mattu, why do you want to die?” I said.
“It isn’t a matter of desire. From the beginning, it was the pattern.”
“Do you think you have a circle built into your brain?”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, you haven’t. Your brain is like mine. It is a thing. It doesn’t travel the same course as your father’s. He didn’t see or want what you do. In other words, you were a tabula rasa at birth.”
“Prove it.”
“Dang bug.”
‘‘Sticks and stones.”
“Remember you love me.”
“I remember. As did my father.”
“Whom I never met,” I said with scorn.
“In myself are all magumas.”
“You’re more Valenian than maguma.”
Said Mattu, “Valenian, maguma, human, horse or mosquito, we are all one.”
“The universal id?”
“Soul,” he said. “In the beginning, it existed, and like the amoeba, it began to divide. Fly to the terminal and see the myriad faces of the One. Tell them they are individuals, hear them agree, see them support or turn against each other. What they do or claim changes nothing. You and I wish to be distinct, but we are part of the One.”
“My God, what’s the use of living, if that’s the case?”
Mattu’s eyes held amusement. “Haven’t I been asking that all along?”
“Tell me something. Just what the hell are you?”
“The Devil’s Adversary.”
“What you need is an opponent. I wish I could be it.”
Ha, ha, ha! All the rulers laughed with pleasure.
* * * *
“Don’t you care that you’re killing people?” This was what Blacky said to me. We were in the nest, and I was wishing Dalia was there so I could share my comfort with her.
“You have it backwards, as usual,” I said. “I don’t kill anyone. Dalia does it.”
“At your urging.”
“The Council doesn’t object, so why should I worry? Besides, why should they care about people?”
“You sound like you’re talking about ants or something. What do you call me? Am I a person?”
“You’re a visual effect,” I said, and she took a fit, started yelling and kicking the wall of the nest. “At least you could show some gratitude,” I said, loud enough to be heard above the din. “When they look at you they get a terrific kick where it counts, and you ought to be glad since that’s the only reason you’re alive.”
There are four castes in Valenian society. First there is Valene. Nobody dictates to her. She is the boss and the rest are underlings. Insulted I suppose she can be by someone, but it’s probably nicer if she doesn’t feel insulted. The second caste is the Ruling Council. They discuss regulations and curiosities. In the Council are the five first-born, after the queen. Dalia is top dog in this group. In a class all by himself is the Devil’s Adversary, Mattu, but since he never challenges the higher echelons, it isn’t clear to me how much power he has. The fourth group encompasses every other Valenian, and they are happy slaves. Actually, there may be a fifth class, the honeycomb or nest, though I’m not certain about this, as I can’t absolutely claim the nest is alive and breathing. That is, it’s surely alive, but it may not have a soul. I ask myself if it has a brain. It seems to have. Every morning it wakes Blacky and me, as I said before. That makes it sound like a clock. It coaxes us to crawl through our sleeping tunnel, which seems to indicate that it possesses motive. It doesn’t hurt us, even appears to enjoy tasting us, and doesn’t this mean it obtains satisfaction? The Valenians feed it—at least I think this is what they’re doing when they fill the holes at each end with hay and grass and occasionally a bundle of bugs. That the nest eats these offerings is obvious. Blacky and I listen to it chomping away at night. So there are either four or five castes in Valenian society.
Yes, the nest is definitely a class by itself. Dalia told me so. When the life cycle draws to a close, the nest experiences the same alterations as the Devil’s Adversary. It atrophies, is sewn into an egg sac, is buried in a safe spot, et cetera.
The ancient Valene found the nest. Symbiote is its generic name. It was the only one of its kind that she located. Give it something, it will give you something. Think loving thoughts while you’re in it and it will love you and kiss you and lick you and put strange juices into your skin. It will provide you with intraporous feeding if you can’t find anything to eat, provide you with heat, softness, euphoria. In fact, lying in the nest is such a pleasant pastime that Valene has to make it off limits to her people, except when they are suffering from depression.
* * * *
I saw a man agitate in the street. He stood on a box, and having drawn a sizable crowd around him, he yelled that humanity would not survive unless the nest was destroyed. He didn’t understand the nature of the nest. But the mob invaded a missile site outside NYC and fired off a couple of rockets. I don’t know where the rockets went. No one in the crowd knew a guidance system from a street sign.
Hitting the nest ought to have been easy. As big as a mountain, it sits in Rockefeller Center, a sweet-smelling pink box-thing which we all love with a fierce heat. From the air it resembles a soft slug. Its surface undulates, as do its sides. No openings are visible. Dalia flies toward it and suddenly there is a large tunnel with its mouth agape, always a different one, and this is how we go into the nest and say hello after our daily sojourns into the countryside.
* * * *
Devil’s Adversary: “Mattu is my name. Beloved Friends is your name. Together we reason. Then why don’t we? Tell me, one of you, why the Valenians should continue.”
“To do what?” said I, standing on my hands and walking around the center of the circle which Valene and the Council created with their white, sleek, crouching bodies.
“To live,” said Mattu. “To come again. To experience another season when the ten thousand years are ended.”
“Why do you usually begin a sentence with why?” said I.
“Shut your mouth, Wasp,” said Blacky. She didn’t walk around the circle, merely stood still on flat palms. Her head was tilted upward and the sheen of sweat on her face glittered.
I ignored her and spoke to Mattu. “Some truths are self-evident. A living organism continues because it wants to.”
“Not so,” said Mattu.
He doesn’t look exactly like a Valenian. He is white and beautiful, aye, but his tail is long, slender, curled at the tip. His legs are furry pipes, his head is shaped like a horse’s. He has no wings. Poor Mattu can’t chase the wind. I think he speaks in ignorance.
He went on. “The Valenians do not wish to continue, nor do they wish to discontinue. Since theirs is a state of noncommitment, I repeat the question. Why do we maintain the status quo?”
“I fail to understand why you ask it in the first place.” I said this at the top of my lungs.
“Because of external circumstances.”
“Such as?”
“I am an abstract thinker, a philosopher if you will, which is why I have been preserved since the beginning. The Valenians are and have always been wishy-washy. This was why they wanted me to accompany them to the terminal, which is the end of eternity. As each new life span springs into existence, the Valenians forget a bit of the past. Mattu never forgets. I am the Reminder.”
“You’re the Devil’s Adversary,” I said.
“One and the same, speaking in the abstract. The Devil is a symbol of illogic. I am his enemy. Since the Valenians are wishy-washy and can’t decide whether or not they desire to experience the next life span, and since they can’t leave the decision to the eggs who aren’t alive yet, the decision must be my responsibility.”
“Which is where I come in, by golly,” I said. The floor of the nest beneath my hands kissed me. “Not now,” I whispered. It subsided, touched me ever so delicately with a hundred tiny mouths but never once tickled.
I went on and on. “What you say smacks of genocide, and I’m educated on the subject. It doesn’t matter if the Valenians don’t care whether or not the eggs hatch.”
“So long as they do hatch?” said Mattu, an intolerable light in his huge pink eyes.
“Somebody has to care. Valene cares.”
“She does not,” said the D.A. (Dumb Ass.) “The members of the Ruling Council bring me reports of the humans who dominate this planet. Every ten millennia, the Valenians come up and destroy billions. This life span has showed us humanity beyond his pubescence. Man has cities, a struggling culture, and he reaches for the stars. Man cares about life and death. He wishes to continue. The Valenians don’t care. There, Beloved Friends, is the situation.”
Valene made a few short comments. “Surely there is more, Mattu. Your argument is rational to a point. I seek to see beyond it.”
“Then hear my next words,” said Mattu in sonorous tones. “The life span of the Valenians is twelve Earth months. The life span of mankind is seventy Earth years.”
“I fail—” said Valene.
“The love of life is a thing,” said Mattu.
“It exists?”
“Beloved Queen and Lover, it does, outside of us.”
“Uncanny.”
“Think deeply.”
“I’m trying.”
“Mama, Mama, see me, love me,” I cried. “All groups are minorities. Integration is possible only for Valenians. I don’t want to die.”
“What is this?” The peaceful eyes of Valene rested on Mattu.
“The Devil’s Advocate isn’t wishy-washy.” Mattu’s throat might have been rusty, so creaky were the noises it created.
“That’s me, that’s me, a Devil’s Advocate,” I said. “Mama, do you love Blacky and me?”
“Valene loves you.”
“Shut up, Wasp,” said Blacky.
“Tell her, Mama,” I said. Walking on my hands to Valene, I paused and allowed my bare soles to rest on the Fur of her breast. “She’s trying to kill me with conscience, Mama. Once and for all, put her in her place. She is a curiosity, only that. Remember the day you and your slave squadron first flew in the sky during this life span? On that day, you spied a curiosity down below on the ground. The Valenians love brilliant curiosities. The brain of the Valenian inspires the body to know pleasure. Tell this black nigger why your slaves didn’t spear her along with the other humans on the street below.”
“Shut up,” screeched Blacky.
“Tell her, please, Mama.”
“Very well.” Valene looked sleek and peaceful and satiated. “I am attracted to vividness. That day I soared above man’s city. My slaves dropped spears wherever I commanded. My favorite color is a combination of blue and black, or rather, I love that which is in contrast to my own pristine colorlessness. On that day, I saw a stunning sight. My beloved color could not be hidden. It was down there on the street.”
Blacky was blubbering. “Don’t say it, don’t, don’t.”
“She spared you because you’re a nigger,” I yelled.
“The sun glistened on your body,” said Valene.
Said I, “You were mother-naked and sweating up a storm in the hot sun. Remember how the crowd hollered for you to spread your legs so they could feed you peanuts. You’re nothing but a peanut-grabbing little nigger.”
Blacky screamed, leaped, spat. She hunched on her ass and cried. “It ain’t justice, Mama. All my life, my being a nigger was the Reason.”
“Amen,” I said.
I held Blacky close and talked.
“You ever had a boy?”
She said no.
“Me either. You think we missed anything?”
She said yes.
“My mama loved me even though I had two incurable deficiencies,” she added, after a while. “I was black and I was a girl.”
“Aw, that doesn’t matter,” I said. “Everybody is a girl.”
“Funny, but you’re right. Underneath, we’re all girls. Except I never made love and I never made sex.”
“You were too little.”
“Which reminds me of the third deficiency.”
“You mean your being a midget?” I said.
Shoving her back against me, she whispered, “Did you ever in all your born days meet up with anybody freakier?”
“Old Mattu would say none of those three things are deficiencies.”
“That’s why I like him,” she said. “He’s tolerant.”
“No, he isn’t. He starts from a whole new premise. Tolerance is a dirty word, and he knows it.”
Blacky took my hand and kissed it. “I want you to do me a favor. I’d do it myself if I wasn’t scared to ride one of the bugs. What I want you to do is take Dalia on a crusade. I want you to kill every white person you see.”
“God!”
“I wish I was a Valenian. In a few months they’ll all be dead, except for Mattu, and he’ll be gone, too. Only the eggs will be left. Wish I could go with them eggs. This world is shit. I want you to kill Whitey and then the nest life span will be easy for the new Valene and her people. Nigger won’t build anything up. In ten millenniums, Nigger will still be eating bananas for dessert after he’s had his cousin as a first course.”
“I have no objections to slaughtering anyone who eats with ten fingers. I’m hard, I guess.”
Dalia and I cleaned out NYC. Whitey lay everywhere. Boats in the harbors left daily, but that made it easier to pick off those mothers.
We extended our reach and cleared the continent in a few weeks. Blacky had unleashed a tiger. The first day out, Dalia and I took along a squadron of slaves. We thought we would need that many spears. We were overestimating the enemy. It made me wonder if all victims of a genocidal ploy became so demoralized that they turned into lame-brained sheep. Perhaps simply knowing someone loathed your meat so much that he wanted to stuff every atom of it into the grinder created a psychic shock that traveled from limb to limb, or person to person, and numbed the entire carcass or race.
I wondered what the human reaction would have been had they known the Valenians didn’t hate them, or, in fact, seldom thought of them. One good lawyer, bending Valene’s ear for a while, could have saved homo sap a deal of agony.
Dalia had a few hundred spears in her arsenal. They were stiff feathers that grew on her stomach. A feather could grow back in a few days. The smaller ones were about five feet in length, hollow toward their base, but very tough and pointed at the tips. Their lethalness lay in the force and accuracy of Dalia’s toss. Her big eyes could spot a snake from a quarter-mile up, and so in control of her body was she that she could erect a pore and pop a spear into the snake’s head before it crawled twelve inches.
Did I love Blacky, after all? Why else would I do such a thing for her? More likely, doing her bidding satisfied an inner craving of my own. Man of my flesh, you were such a sniveling sinner. Your thievery caused starvation and pain. There was more than enough money to conquer all our enemies, but you siphoned it away before it could be used for that. Pollution, poverty, disease and the stars were what we wanted, needed, to conquer, and we could have succeeded if you thieves hadn’t stolen our blood. You, I mean you, who ripped off the box of pencils, the tractor, or ten percent of the till you were supposed to protect. Every little bit hurt.
The men of my flesh ran like rats as the squadron shadowed the sun, those days. But they were bigger than rats and easier to stab. I was merciful and directed my pilots to aim for the head. Besides, it made the slaves more enthusiastic. Going for a target made better sport than just dumping a load.
* * * *
“Did you do it?” said Blacky.
“I did.”
“Do you feel guilty?”
“Why should I?”
“Well, considering that you put down every Whitey in the country—”
“Nobody will ever do that,” I said. “Some personalities are basically slime and spread out over the woodwork like a coat of paint. You can’t spot them and they survive. They’ll always continue. There are plenty of them left.”
“I told you to kill them all.”
“I did.”
“But you just said—”
“Let’s keep illogic logical, okay? I’m not omnipotent. I killed everybody who lost his head. Hey. Ha ha ha! Anyhow, you can’t expect me to personally rout them from their holes. They might catch me. And then they’d do me like Mussolini.”
“They’re too desperate to think of revenge.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” I said. “Homo sap is never that desperate.”
* * * *
Mattu: “I ask the question, my queen. Why shall the Valenians continue?”
Valene: “The question is important?”
Blacky: “It is.”
Valene: “Elaborate, Mattu.”
Mattu: “It is all in desire. Man wants to live. The horse, the cow, the creature that moves on his belly, the one who lurks in his lair desires to remain living. Every living thing on Earth desires this, save for the Valenians.”
Blacky: “Does Mattu want to live?”
Mattu: “What price glory? I am not pure Valenian, which is why the ancient queen preserved me. I provide the piece of soul found lacking in Valene. I have a conscience. For this reason, my life needs a reason.”
Blacky: “Queen Valene, Mattu is like man. Long ago he suckled his young. Maybe this is the creator of conscience in all creatures who possess it.”
Valene: “How so?”
Blacky: “The sharing of self is always by choice. Once made and done with, it is irrevocable. Do we automatically love that which takes a portion of us with our blessing? And if we love, doesn’t that put our feet on the dual road of morality? If we never love, the question of good or evil doesn’t concern us.”
Mattu: “The Valenians love, but the question of good is not in their heads.”
Blacky: “The Valenians don’t love. They want. There is a difference. Any hedonist is well acquainted with it.”
Valene: “Hedonism, then, is the epitome of evil?”
Blacky: “The epitome of evil is heedlessness.”
Mattu: “We digress. The option for the Valenians can be death, for we don’t care. Everyone cares but us.”
Valene: “Care is the epitome of good?”
Blacky: “You will sacrifice me on an altar if I say yes. If care is the highest good and the Valenians don’t care, then the Valenians represent the lowest evil.”
Mattu: “You forget that they don’t care.”
Blacky: “I could go mad with this conversation. It isn’t sensible that an insult isn’t always an insult. I can call the Valenians bastards and they take no offense and lick my beautiful black body because the sight of my blackness gives them a charge. Mattu, what do you feel when you look at my opaque hide?”
Mattu: “I am half and half. I like in many ways. First, my teeth itch. Long ago I was pure carnivore. Second, my id stirs. Your brilliance is in contrast to my whiteness. You are so black. Come, let me lick your face.”
Blacky: “Watch the teeth.”
Mattu: “Why stand on your hands in our presence? It is not the way of your kind.”
Blacky: “Yes, it is. It’s called rationalization. You can’t possibly love me for my goddamn color, therefore you love me for my acrobatic ability.”
Mattu: “Having a conscience, I know a smell when I smell one. You are on the road to insanity, mad with a great madness.”
Blacky: “Hell, honey, I’ve been on that road since the day my mama dropped me among the boll weevils.”
The Great I: “On your pointy head.”
* * * *
A thought came and went in my mind, came and went, came and flew, came and crawled away, came and reeled before me, staggered, fell. I made it mine. It was evil and treacherous and absolutely essential for my survival.
Dalia and I went to Africa and chased jungle bunnies. That tribe we had watched a few weeks ago, they were fresh out of girls. Being a girl myself, it teed me off. Why the hell do men hunger for the taste of woman? You frail mice, you just want somebody you can take advantage of. That way you don’t have to apologize for your poor performance.
I once knew a woman who was so scared of getting pregnant that she spent years running from her old man. Finally he got sick and tired of it and had a vasectomy. After about a year of puzzling it all out, the wife got it into her head that she didn’t have to be afraid of anything anymore. She went after that man of hers with a vengeance. You know what? He went limp as custard. Permanently.
Now that the women were gone, the tribe of natives were using up each other. They drew straws that day, and the loser of the duel furnished dinner to the rest.
I waited until they were all fed and then I killed them and I cried as I did it.
* * * *
Mattu: “The Valenians existed before man. Perhaps this means we have rights above man. Yes. Squatters’ rights. But rights mean nothing to us, which places us back where I started. Desire is the purpose.”
Blacky: “Listen to him, Queen Valene. Mattu is good and sensible and full of peace.”
* * * *
The Council Chamber was empty when I killed her. I had brought a rock with me from my last trip with Dalia, and I took it and held it behind me and sneaked up on her. She turned and saw me.
“Mama mama mama mama—”
“Why call her?” I cried. “She can’t help you. She’s been dead for years.”
“You remember her.”
“So?”
“She’d look at you with her fierce eyes and you’d go hide in a corner.”
“I’m sorry I have to do this,” I said. “Lay down and don’t fight. Make it easy for me.”
“I’ll come back to haunt you. I’ll never let you rest.”
“Like hell.”
I brained her. I knocked Blacky with that rock. It was because of her big mouth. She should have been on my side.
* * * *
There were about two million people still alive, was my guess. I wouldn’t kill any more, as there was a need for them to build up their numbers again. In ten thousand years, the children of Valene would need food. Man would make his old societies new, he’d commit self-rape, and when Valene came she would win again. I hoped I did it right. All my teachers had told me the blacks were intellectually inferior, so I left mostly blacks alive. The brains were all gone. I hoped those niggers wouldn’t be waiting for Valene with a pack of superweapons, come the resurrection.
I couldn’t find Blacky. I hunted for her.
“Nigger, where are you?”
Everyone who has ever lived leaves a footprint somewhere.
“Nigger, you’re around, I know.”
Maybe her mealy mouth had deposited an echo in a crevice.
“I can’t hear you, nigger.
“Are you good and dead?
“Did I really get rid of you?
“Hey, collard greens, I cut the mustard this time, didn’t I?”
A mattress sinks and stays sunk alter a body lies on it for a time. Blacky didn’t weigh much and had left no indentation. Clothes? She wore none, but I hunted anyway. No jewelry of Blacky’s lay in the shack. No shred of her body was stuck on the furniture. No hair was caught in the nest; I know because I crawled through every one of the holes. Talk about getting sucked! That sucking was finally taking hold. My skin was a fraction of an inch thicker. The nest was prepping me, coating me for the big trip halfway to yonder.
“Have you seen Blacky?” I said to Mattu. “And I just want a simple answer without a lot of philosophy wrapped around it.”
“How can I have seen her when you murdered her?”
“I’m glad Valenians don’t care. If they saw her, they’d want her, but they can’t see her and they won’t hold it against me.”
“I’m a Valenian and I care.”
“Don’t kid me. You couldn’t care less what I did to Blacky.”
“Well, at least remotely. Immortality begs for diversion and you provide me with such.”
“Do you love me, Mattu?”
“Do you care one way or the other?”
“Hell, no!”
“You are going to be a Valenian with a difference,” he said.
“Same as you?”
“Opposite of me.”
I said, “Devil’s Adversary, meet the genuine, already crowned Devil’s Advocate. From now on, I will be the Valenians’ lawyer, and I intend to see that they survive.”
“You have been chosen by the Council?”
“Signed, sealed and practically delivered.”
“Before you go to the nest, approach me for a last farewell. Look me in the eye and see a brilliant curiosity.”
He tilted his head toward me, and the outer portion of his eye nearest me acted as a mirror and revealed the Chamber and its contents. Before I turned away from him, I caught a glimpse of the last human being I would see for a long time. It was a tiny nigger gal with blue-black body and crazy eyes. A brilliant curiosity.
* * * *
The nest is the laboratory. It preps oddities, like, say, Valenians who are unusually large, or the Devil’s Adversary, or the Devil’s Advocate, or anybody different for whom the Valenians form an affection. To them, life forms are all the same. They don’t care at all.
The nest sucks. Not out, but in. Into me went the chemicals necessary for my preservation. I felt bloated and well sucked by the time the nest finished with me.
A bit shrunken in size, but not much because I was small to start with, I was lifted by Dalia and kissed good-bye.
“We had a good time,” I said. “Love you.”
“I’ll see you after a short sleep.”
“It won’t be you. You’re going to die and I’ll be playing with another Dalia when the nest life span comes.”
“What’s the difference?” she said, and of course she was right.
The egg sac was warm and cozy. The tube was stiff when Dalia placed it in my throat. Immediately reality became fuzzy.
“Mattu, do you think the nest can give me a nice fur coat, next life span?” I said.
“It is a very capable organism. If you desire to grow fur—”
“Will it be shiny white like yours?”
Oh, how the gleam in his eyes pierced me. “Little girl, didn’t anyone ever warn you about wishing for the moon?”
I settled back, disgruntled, but not too much. “Mattu, you’re my friendly enemy and I’ll get you next time around.” It was the last thing I said.
I was aware of the sac’s contents pressing at me from all sides. My knees touched my chest, my chin touched my knees, my arms hugged my legs, I felt more comfortable than I had in my mother’s womb. If she were alive, she would understand. She gave me life, which, as I said before, was a mound of crap. Anyone would do the same as I was doing.
I heard Dalia close the sac. I sucked on the tube. It softened in my mouth. Sweet nectar slid and dropped and beckoned sleep. I was still aware as Dalia flew me to my resting place, scarcely felt it when I hit the ocean and sank.
In a minute I’ll take the deep nap. In the meantime, I think of the future. I am happy. Come the resurrection, I’ll live again. I am the Devil’s Advocate. As for you who are going to be around when I wake up, you mothers had better watch it. Blacky, my better half, my conscience, is dead. I killed her. Now there is only myself, and it is a thing you created. Here’s to an everlasting vacation in Hades.