We crept up the spine of the continent, emerging from the jungle for a day and a half to climb a good-sized mountain, then more jungle on the other side. Schweiz asked our guide why we had not gone around the mountain instead of over it, and was told that this was the only route, for poison-ants infested all the surrounding lowlands: very cheering. Beyond the mountain lay a chain of lakes and streams and ponds, many of them thick with gray toothy snouts barely breaking the surface. All this seemed unreal to me. A few days’ sail to the north lay Velada Borthan, with its banking houses and its groundcars, its customs collectors and its godhouses. That was a tamed continent, but for its uninhabitable interior. Man had made no impact at all, though, on this place where we marched. Its disorderly wildness oppressed me—that and the heavy air, the sounds in the night, the unintelligible conversations of our primitive companions.
On the sixth day we came to the native village. Perhaps three hundred wooden huts were scattered over a broad meadow at a place where two rivers of modest size ran together. I had the impression that there once had been a larger town here, possibly even a city, for on the borders of the settlement I saw grassy mounds and humps, quite plausibly the site of ancient ruins. Or was that only an illusion? Did I need so badly to convince myself that the Sumarnu had regressed since leaving our continent, that I had to see evidences of decline and decay wherever I looked?
The villagers surrounded us: not hostile, only curious. Northerners were uncommon sights. A few of them came close and touched me, a timid pat on the forearm, a shy squeeze of the wrist, invariably accompanied by a quick little smile. These jungle folk seemed not to have the sullen sourness of those who lived in the shacks by the harbor. They were gentler, more open, more childlike. Such little taint of Veladan civilization as had managed to stain the harbor folk had darkened their spirits; not so here, where contact with northerners was less frequent.
An interminable parley began among Schweiz, our guide, and three of the village elders. After the first few moments Schweiz was out of it: the guide, indulging in long cascades of verbal embellishments footnoted by frantic gesticulations, seemed to be explaining the same thing over and over to the villagers, who constantly made the same series of replies to him. Neither Schweiz nor I could understand a syllable of it. At last the guide, looking agitated, turned to Schweiz and poured forth a stream of Sumarnu-accented Mannerangi, which I found almost wholly opaque but which Schweiz, with his tradesman’s skill at communicating with strangers, was able to penetrate. Schweiz said finally to me, “They’re willing to sell to us. Provided we can show them that we’re worthy of having the drug.”
“How do we do that?”
“By taking some with them, at a love-ritual this evening. Our guide’s been trying to talk them out of it, but they won’t budge. No communion, no merchandise.”
“Are there risks?” I asked.
Schweiz shook his head. “It doesn’t seem that way to me. But the guide has the idea that we’re only looking for profit in the drug, that we don’t mean to use it ourselves but intend to go back to Manneran and sell what we get for many mirrors and many heat-rods and many knives. Since he thinks we aren’t users, he’s trying to protect us from exposure to it. The villagers also think we aren’t users, and they’re damned if they’ll turn a speck of the stuff over to anyone who’s merely planning to peddle it. They’ll make it available only to true believers.”
“But we are true believers,” I said.
“I know. But I can’t convince our man of that. He knows enough about northerners to know that they keep their minds closed at all times, and he wants to pamper us in our sickness of soul. But I’ll try again.”
Now it was Schweiz and our guide who parleyed, while the village chiefs stood silent. Adopting the gestures and even the accent of the guide, so that both sides of the conversation became unintelligible to me, Schweiz pressed and pressed and pressed, and the guide resisted all that the Earthman was telling him, and a feeling of despair came over me so that I was ready to suggest that we give up and go empty-handed back to Manneran. Then Schweiz somehow broke through. The guide, still suspicious, clearly asked Schweiz whether he really wanted what he said he wanted, and Schweiz emphatically said he did, and the guide, looking skeptical, turned once more to the village chiefs. This time he spoke only briefly with them, and then briefly again with Schweiz. “It’s been settled,” Schweiz told me. “We’ll take the drug with them tonight.” He leaned close and touched my elbow. “Something for you to remember. When you go under: be loving. If you can’t love them, all is lost.”
I was offended that he had found it necessary to warn me.
42
Ten of them came for us at sundown and led us into the forest east of the village. Among them were the three chieftains and two other older men, along with two young men and three women. One of the women was a handsome girl, one a plain girl, and one quite old. Our guide did not go with us; I am not sure whether he was not invited to the ceremony or simply did not feel like taking part.
We marched a considerable distance. No longer could we hear the cries of children in the village or the barking of domestic animals. Our halting-place was a secluded clearing, where hundreds of trees had been felled and the dressed logs laid out in five rows as benches, to form a pentagonal amphitheater. In the middle of the clearing was a clay-lined fire-pit, with a great heap of firewood neatly stacked beside it; as soon as we arrived, the two young men commenced building a towering blaze. On the far side of the woodpile I saw a second clay-lined pit, about twice as wide as a large man’s body; it descended diagonally into the ground and gave the appearance of being a passage of no little depth, a tunnel offering access to the depths of the world. By the glow of the firelight I tried to peer into it from where I stood, but I was unable to see anything of interest.
Through gestures the Sumarnu showed us where we should sit: at the base of the pentagon. The plain girl sat beside us. To our left, next to the tunnel entrance, sat the three chiefs. To our right, by the fire-pit, were the two young men. In the far right corner sat the old woman and one of the old men; the other old man and the handsome girl went to the far left corner. Full darkness was upon us by the time we were seated. The Sumarnu now removed what little clothing they wore, and, seeing them obviously beckoning to us to do the same, Schweiz and I stripped, piling our clothes on the benches behind us. At a signal from one of the chiefs the handsome girl rose and went to the fire, poking a bough into it until she had a torch; then, approaching the slanting mouth of the tunnel, she wriggled awkwardly feet-first into it, holding the torch high. Girl and torch disappeared entirely from view. For a little while I could see the flickering light of the firebrand coming from below, but soon it went out, sending up a gust of dark smoke. Shortly the girl emerged, without the torch. In one hand she carried a thick-rimmed red pot, in the other a long flask of green glass. The two old men—high priests?—left their benches and took these things from her. They began a tuneless chant, and one, reaching into the pot, scooped from it a handful of white powder—the drug!—and dropped it into the flask. The other solemnly shook the flask from side to side in a mixing motion. Meanwhile the old woman—a priestess?—had prostrated herself by the mouth of the tunnel and began to chant in a different intonation, a jagged gasping rhythm, while the two young men flung more wood on the fire. The chanting continued for a good many minutes. Now the girl who had descended into the tunnel—a slim high-breasted wench with long silken red-brown hair—took the flask from the old man and brought it to our side of the fire, where the plain girl, stepping forward, received it reverently with both hands. Solemnly she carried it to the three seated chieftains and held it toward them. The chieftains now joined the chanting for the first time. What I thought of as the Rite of the Presentation of the Flask went on and on; I was fascinated at first, finding delight in the strangeness of the ceremony, but soon I grew bored and had to amuse myself by trying to invent a spiritual content for what was taking place. The tunnel, I decided, symbolized the genital opening of the world-mother, the route to her womb, where the drug—made from a root, from something growing underground—could be obtained. I devised an elaborate metaphorical construct involving a mother-cult, the symbolic meaning of carrying a lighted torch into the world-mother’s womb, the use of plain and handsome girls to represent the universality of womanhood, the two young fire-warders as guardians of the chieftains’ sexual potency, and a great deal more, all of it nonsense, but—so I thought—an impressive enough scheme to be assembled by a bureaucrat like myself, of no great intellectual powers. My pleasure in my own musings evaporated abruptly when I realized how patronizing I was being. I was treating these Sumarnu like quaint savages, whose chants and rites were of mild aesthetic interest but could not possibly have any serious content. Who was I to take this lofty attitude? I had come to them, had I not, begging the drug of enlightenment that my soul craved; which of us then was the superior being? I assailed myself for my snobbery. Be loving. Put aside courtly sophistication. Share their rite if you can, and at the least show no contempt for it, feel no contempt, have no contempt. Be loving. The chieftains were drinking now, each taking a sip, handing the flask back to the plain-looking girl, who when all three had sipped began to move about the circle, bringing the flask first to the old men, then to the old woman, then to the handsome girl, then to the young fire-tenders, then to Schweiz, then to me. She smiled at me as she gave me the flask. By the fire’s leaping light she seemed suddenly beautiful. The flask contained a warm gummy wine; I nearly gagged as I drank. But I drank. The drug entered my gut and journeyed thence to my soul.