Biting the Sun Read online

  And then there was this sound. A kind of soft, soft, pat-pat noise, like tiny paws clapping. I was just thinking how pretty it was, crazy and disorientated as I’d become, when the heavens opened and the desert was under water. The rain rustled and thundered to the earth, but over it all I could hear a chorus of excited twittering and wailing and squeaking all around me from millions of small furry throats in sand burrows and rock holes, celebrating the rain-rite. You couldn’t see eye gleams through the deluge, but I knew they were there. The pet got one of my ankle chains in its mouth and gently but firmly tugged me to some sort of shelter in the rocks. A bit late, though. I was soaked. I’m sure Four BEE could produce a rain-resistant fabric, but who needs it in Four BEE? The only rain there had been a couple of widely spaced drops after a minor Jang sabotage.

  The pet honked and honked.

  “You’re right,” I said, trying to dry my wet face on my wet hands, “it is beautiful.”

  And it was really: solid silver wetness, the song of the desert drinking and drinking all around me. And from the burrows and holes, the song of life.

  * * *

  —

  I never thought I’d sleep through the discomfort and the noise, but I did. I dreamed that I was a desert woman with a child, and we had found, at last, a watering place.

  Dawn, like a pale green note of music in the mountains, woke me, and I sat up, damp, cold, and alone.

  Now I’ll die, I thought, out here with no nice robots to carry me to Limbo. I’ll die of cold and hunger and oxygen deficiency, and loneliness. The pet had gone. “The rain’s stopped, anyway,” I congratulated it, as I crawled out of the rock and began to see.

  And then I nearly did die, but not because of anything I’d thought of. It was what was out there that did it.

  I’d never seen such unexpected, unlooked-for beauty. That the dunes, starved of water for so much of their life, could return a vote of thanks like this for what to them must have seemed a mere half-cup, was beyond me. I groveled mentally before the wonder of it all.

  The desert had blossomed.

  I thought the rocks were on fire again, but it was the flame of sudden flowers, the sparks of erupted gorse. Cacti had leaped high in the night, bursting as they went into showers of green orchids. Pools lay between the rock sweeps, perhaps draining even now, but crowded with quick fern, starred with petals grown in seconds by rain, knocked free by rain in ten splits. And in the sand grass was waving. I looked and far off, in every direction, I saw the purple and the green, the gold, the peridot of blowing stems, not silk or glass or satin-of-steel, but living feathers, greenness that breathed. And I breathed, deeply, slowly, because the growing things had saved my life, had given me, in a night of miracle and silver, all the oxygen my lungs would ever crave.

  I went forward, nervous at first, afraid to tread on this carpet of life, but all around the little animals were rushing, bouncing and orgying in the growth. I saw a tribe of ski-feet in the distance, dancing together in a weird, almost awful, dance of strange and primitive joy. Suddenly I was part of it. I, with my brand of mankind, my Jangness, my cityness. I tore off the ridiculous chains and see-through, the earrings, the ornaments. I could have put real flowers in my hair, but could not be so sacrilegious as to pick them. Besides, my hair was scarlet fur, and I danced and ran and laughed and sang with the mad small animals among the glory of the woken green; it was so hot now, I was dry as a bone.

  Then I found the pet.

  It burst at me from the grasses like a pure, pale blossom.

  I can hardly remember the laughing and the running now, and the playing and the dancing, but I remember the happiness, the happiness like a wound, that bleeds the life-spark.

  Oh, we ran, side by side, the pet and I, and never have I known such closeness with any of my race, my mankind, as I knew with that white animal I stole, in casual and neurotic need, from a store in Four BEE.

  Once, when we lay in the grass, I said to it:

  “You must have a name; no, no, you must. You are a personality, the same as I, a being, a life.” And I called the pet Thunder-Flower, because of the flowers all around us, that grew from rain and flaring light and thunder, and then we ran on.

  And how simple it would have been if we had never found our way back to the sand-ship. But we did. I hardly noticed the slight familiarity of the landscape. The rock terraces were bright with flowers now in the redness of twilight.

  We rushed on side by side. Sometimes I was a little ahead, knee-deep in the dune grass, sometimes it was the pet, its head barely cresting the green, its fur pink in the sunset’s aftermath. And then it was ahead of me and I saw it leap high, clear of all the grasses, and drop back, and not appear again. Then I saw the shimmer in the air.

  “Oh no!” I called out to the desert and the sky. “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!” And I ran on and flung myself against the shock wall that Assule had erected to prevent calamities.

  Yes, it’s a strange sensation, an absolute tremble of fiery ecstasy all over, like the near-climax of a love machine, but I was barely dazed when the robots came and picked me up.

  The pet, of course, was dead.

  8

  Assule kept telling me what a fool I was.

  “I told you about the shock wall,” he shouted. “You might have been hurt far more than you were.”

  He didn’t mention the pet. He did mention that any accident I’d suffered was really my own fault for rushing off so rudely. I just lay there in my cabin, looking at him, and said “Shut up” every once in a while. The females hung together in the doorway and said how disgraceful it was I’d been found quite nude, and where were all my chains and see-through?

  Once they’d drawn off a bit, I made one of the robots bring me the pet’s limp, furry, white body. I stared at its glazed orange eyes. It looked so full of bliss in death.

  “I want a plane back to the city,” I told the Glar. “Now.”

  Well, he was only too pleased to see the back of me, so he got one, and I got in and rode home, staring at the covered-in window spaces, the pet in my lap. There was nothing left to see, anyway. The desert’s blossoming cannot be sustained for more than a single unit. The glory I had run through had been dying already.

  At Four BEE I went straight to Limbo.

  “This is my pet,” I told them, “it’s very important to me. I want you to give it a new body.”

  But they wouldn’t, and I’d known they wouldn’t. They tried to explain how ethical they were being.

  “We cannot do this for an animal,” they said. “Besides, it has been left too long.” But this was only an excuse. Oh, please, make it have been an excuse.

  * * *

  —

  So I went home alone. And I was alone there too.

  And I dreamed all night of the desert and the sun I must not bite, and at last I knew the significance that the proverb held for me. I was so tired I could admit it now. I had tried so often and so hard, and it had been no good.

  The sun. Oh, yes. The sun. A little bit of breakable clay had suddenly defeated me, from its nest in a desert of rainbow and erupted fire. I knew what the sun was; perhaps those records meant it the same way, I’m not sure. The sun was the Ordained Way of living. In my case it was the Ordained Way of going to hypno-school, of being Jang, graduating to an Older Person, one’s entire life mapped out irrevocably, even death not allowed, but merely a new body, or a long rest in a mind-darkening twilight, after which the cycle begins again, with all past memories wiped clean. So irrevocable, so unavoidable, so terrible, so dull, so doomed to a tragedy that was even too small, too dull, too doomed to be a tragedy at all. Don’t bite the sun, you’ll burn your mouth. I’d bitten ceaselessly, hopelessly, and I was burned, I was burned. I was a cinder.

  * * *

  —

  I knew what was happening to me, and repeated aloud:

&n
bsp; “The pet has officially cut me out of its circle.” After which I knew I had obeyed the rules and was free to weep.

  1

  I lay around home for almost a tenth of a vrek, in a kind of stupor. I must have cried most of the time. When I started to come out of it, the first thing I noticed was how sore my nose and eyes were, and how inflamed my cheeks were where the tears had gone on and on streaming down. So I had a soothing face-salve pack, and soothing eye-lotion pads, and in about twenty splits I looked normal again, at least. Then this pop-pop came from the porch signal, and I switched on the image, and there was this derisann male, with long honey-colored hair and mustache, and a lovely, tawny, athletically slim body.

  “Hergal?” I asked.

  “It’s me, dear,” said this beautifully modulated voice, and that “dear” told me it couldn’t be anyone else but Hatta.

  “H-Hatta?”

  “Yes, dear,” said beautiful, groshing Hatta. “I heard all about it. I’m so sorry. Can I come in?”

  And I activated the door and went down to meet him. We met in a goldish sort of hall, and he looked so derisann and sad for me that I just grabbed him and started howling my eyes out again. He was so good. He’s always so sweet really, Hatta is, I think he’s compulsively kind.

  He put me on a couch and turned on the lullaby rhythm and the most soothing upper-tonal music he could find, and then he sat and rocked me gently in his lovely arms.

  When I got a bit better, he mopped me up. I just sat and stared at him as he poured me fire-and-ice, and fed me small sugar grapes.

  “You’re so wonderful, Hatta,” I said, and his hands trembled. “Oh Hatta,” I said, “let’s get married. Now.” But he made me lie down for forty splits before he’d even let me say it again. Then he said, very softly:

  “Are you sure, ooma? Are you?”

  “Oh, Hatta,” I said, “don’t be silly. How could I possibly object?”

  He kind of shook his head, but he sat and waited quite patiently as I had another face pack and got ready, and then we went out to his rented bird-plane, and shot off to the Ivory Dome. We promised to have love exclusively for the afternoon, and to come back and pay afterward as well, as you have to if you’re inside the annulment period.

  Then we went to one of the underwater caves, green and shells and stuff, and had the most glorious love. I think when you’re shaky and recovering from something, you receive better. Anyway, it was groshing.

  “Oh, Hatta,” I sighed afterward.

  But he turned away.

  “Oh Hatta, what’s wrong?” I asked. I got up and went around to the other side of the synthetic seaweed couch, and he was lying there, his eyes shut, great tears rolling down his face now. “Hatta, Hatta,” I implored, “ooma, what is it?”

  “Can’t you see,” he asked softly, “how useless it all is?”

  “What?” I said. “I thought you wanted me to marry you. I don’t understand.”

  “No,” he said, “you don’t, do you?”

  “But I loved every minute,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “I loved having you, my ooma, and you loved having my body, my new, unreal joke of a body. I loved you, and you loved the shell of me.”

  “Oh Hatta,” I said.

  We were silent for a long while.

  “I love you,” he said then.

  “I know,” I said.

  “And you love my body,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said “and, Hatta, I think you’re so terribly nice and derisann and—”

  “And you don’t love me, do you? Just the outside.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  And he wept silently.

  And I got tosky again.

  “Hatta!” I screamed at him. “Look, I just can’t stand this on top of everything else. I’m in such a chaos, I can’t cope with your chaos as well. Really, I’m sorry, but if you don’t stop I’ll go zaradann.”

  He apologized, got up, said he’d pay the other half of the marriage-fee, and went away, leaving me the bird-plane.

  And when I saw him next, he had four arms and scales. Poor, poor Hatta. If only he could learn to hate.

  2

  I booked Sense Distortion after the episode with Hatta. I think word of my unusually hysterical state had been passed on to the Committee, because I didn’t have to wait long. They even sent a little blue-and-pink sky-ship for me, all merry and gay and so on, and they played merry and gay and so on music to go with it.

  “Ah yes,” they said when they saw me, and led me away by the hand.

  So I lay down in the soft furry cubicle and waited to become a flower, and my last thought, I recollect, was, Where did this fur come from, a desert animal? And I vowed to dismantle the fur room at home.

  And then I was in this still, morning forest with a pale sky, and I was a tall plant, gently waving and growing, my mind full of plant thoughts, receiving sunshine and feeling my molecules transmute it into green cells. This was very soothing. I was a flower for ages, and it should have done me good. After being a flower, I became a mountain, which was rather grand. I think I felt a bit like Assule, actually. Certainly I thought the sort of thoughts I bet he did. I am ancient and enduring, I am a god-thing, I am eternity. I ignored the winds and the sand chipping me, the rain eroding me, the hot sun drying me up. Later, I was a lake, blue and rippling, miles of me, and it’s wonderful to be so long and wide, and aware of every inch and eddy of yourself. I kept giving gentle little twitches, flinching the sun off my skin, encouraging my water plants to grow.

  I came to and was surprised at first to find I had two arms and legs and hair, and all the boring rest of it. I had this impulse, which apparently is quite common after S.D., to dash off to Limbo and say “I want a long, blue, rippling body.” But they sidetracked me. They came buzzing along and gave me a meal injection, and encouraged me to write poetry on a machine about my experiences.

  Thinta came to meet me—I have this feeling they suggested she should, and of course, Thinta, being loyal and painfully duty-bound, came haring over in her safe pink bird-plane. Oh, yes, she was being very safe today. You’d never think she crashed on the Zeefahr too, not so long ago, just like habit-ridden Hergal.

  “Let’s make water dresses,” twittered Thinta.

  We went and got the stuff and the instructions, and wandered for ages along galleries of clacking light-crochet machines, steel-knitters, and picture wool on which you can paint with electric rays, landscapes and things to bewilder yourself and your friends with. I wanted to see what Thinta would do, and fairly obviously stole some fire-needles; she just looked a bit uneasy and pretended she hadn’t seen. Well, I really was being humored. Wild possibilities of how I could drive everyone zaradann flitted through my brain, but I felt too basically fed up to pursue any of them.

  We ate fifth meal at the Fire-Pit, then went and made our dresses in the deadly perfect sunshine of the Ilex Park, with a lot of jade leaves bashing us. In the middle of it all, the jade reminded me of the dragon in Jade Tower and all the other animals in Four BAA, and then of Lorun, and I started crying again. The tears got muddled in with the water dress and ruined it.

  “Oh,” Thinta kept imploring, “oh, do stop, ooma.” I only managed it because I could see how upset she was getting. I’m not sure if it was sympathy that was disturbing her or embarrassment. Probably both.

  We had sixth meal and Thinta enthusiastically paid for it, and then gave me a gentle fluttering sort of little talking to, on the sky-ship where we were eating it.

  “You know,” she started, “everybody has silly times.”

  “Do they?” I inquired unhelpfully.

  “You know they do, ooma,” Thinta said. “Look at me and that business about wanting to be a cat thing, and the fur and the purring reflex that, thank goodness, the Committee was wise enough not to give me.
Now I can see how ridiculous I was being and laugh at it. Ha, ha!” Did her laugh sound a bit strained?

  “I don’t think you really laugh at it,” I told her callously. “I think you pretend to laugh, when really you’re furious you can’t sit and purr at me.”

  “Oh, really,” said Thinta, looking as annoyed as Thinta can look, which means she just looks puzzled. The only time I’d ever seen her really angry was over the refused purring mechanism. “Anyway,” she said, “what I’m trying to say is, anyone can get over anything.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Oh yes, really they can, ooma.”

  “Perhaps they can,” I said, “but perhaps they shouldn’t.”

  She couldn’t answer me. She tried but she couldn’t. Well, I couldn’t answer myself, could I?

  * * *

  —

  I really did try, though, to get back into life as I’d known it, but it was like a tunic the wrong size; it didn’t fit me anymore. If it ever had. I shopped and stole, bubble-rode and fire-rode, went and cursed the Robotics Museum, and married Hergal again, though I could feel he didn’t enjoy our afternoon very much. He was too worried I’d start crying or something all over him, though I very considerately didn’t. I went to the Dimension Palace and didn’t even get properly frightened, just thoroughly tosky, though I suppose it was the best result I’d got so far.

  Finally I thought of the Dream Rooms.

  I went to Fourth Sector’s version, which has purple clouds and floating cubicles, and took about eighty splits programming the robot to make sure I got a perfectly groshing fantasy. I didn’t even have any guilt feelings this time—my Q-R with the water carpet had indirectly done that for me, at least.

  And there I was, this fantastically erotic and famous dancer of an ancient desert tribe. We’d been captured by another more powerful tribe and taken in chains out into the desert with them as slaves. We lay by night under the cold desert stars, glaring at their big, dark blue tents, and the biggest tent of all, which belonged to their chieftain. I’d never seen the chieftain, but apparently he’d seen me and heard of my reputation in the dancing line; now, at the beginning of my dream, he’d requested my presence before him in his huge tent, and sent me this groshing costume to wear. I got into it and admired myself in the mirror his servants held up for me. It was scarlet, embroidered with seed pearls and silver disks and bled-red tassels. I had thick black hair, oceans of it, and green eyes, and I looked insumatt. Then this old wise-woman of our tribe came clanking up in her chains, poor old thing, and drew me aside.