Night Lamp (3 page)

For several days, or perhaps a week, Jaro wandered the hills, eating thornberries, grass seeds, the tubers of a furry-leaved plant which smelled neither bitter nor sharp, and which, fortuitously, failed to poison him. He moved listlessly, in a state of detachment, aware of no conscious thoughts.

One day he came down from the hills to gather fruit from trees growing beside the road. A group of peasant boys from along the Wyching Belts took note of him. They were an unlovely lot, squat, sturdy, with long arms, thick legs and round pugnacious faces. They wore black felt scuttle-hats, with tufts of auburn hair protruding through holes above the ears, tight trousers and brown coats: proud formal garments, suitable for the weekly Cataxis, which was their immediate destination. Still, they had time for good deeds along the way. With hoots and whoops they set out to exterminate this nibbler of roadside fruit. Jaro fought as well as he could, and quite amusingly, so that the boys were encouraged to invent variations upon their methods. Eventually it was decided to break every bone in Jaro’s body, in order to teach him a smart lesson.

At this point the Faths arrived on the scene.

In the hospital at Sronk Jaro’s hurts had mended and the protective devices had been detached from his frame. He now lay easy on his bed, wearing the soft blue pajamas the Faths had brought him.

Althea sat beside the bed, surreptitiously studying Jaro’s face. The cap of black hair, washed, trimmed and brushed, lay sleek and soft. The bruises had faded, leaving clear dark olive skin, long dark lashes shrouded his eyes, the wide mouth drooped at the corners as if in wistful reverie. It was a face, thought Althea, of poetic charm, and she fought the impulse to snatch him up, hold him close, pet him and kiss him. It would not do, of course; first, Jaro would be shocked by the outrage. Second, his bones, still fragile, might not withstand the kind of hugging she would like to give him. For the thousandth time she wondered at the events which had brought Jaro to Pagg Road, and how distressed his parents must feel. He lay quiet, eyes half-closed: perhaps drowsy, perhaps preoccupied with his own thoughts. He had described the silhouette as best he could; there was no more to be learned in this quarter. She asked, “Do you remember anything about the house?”

“No. It was just there.”

“Were there no other houses nearby?”

“No.” Jaro lay with jaw set and hands clenched.

Althea stroked the back of his hand and the fist gradually relaxed. “Rest now,” she told him. “You are safe and soon you will be well.”

A minute passed. Then, in a dreary voice Jaro asked, “What will happen to me now?”

Althea was taken by surprise, and responded with the hint of a stutter, which she hoped Jaro might not notice. “That depends on the authorities. They will do what is best.”

“They will lock me away in the dark, down where no one knows.”

For a moment Althea was too astonished to speak. “What an odd thing to say! Who put such a wicked idea into your head?”

Jaro’s pale face twitched. He closed his eyes and restlessly turned away.

Althea asked again, “Who told you such an awful thing?”

Jaro muttered, “I don’t know.”

Althea frowned. “Try to remember, Jaro.”

Jaro’s lips moved; Althea bent to hear, but Jaro’s explanation, if such it had been, went past her ears unheard.

Althea spoke fervently: “I can’t imagine who put such a notion in your head! It’s utter nonsense, of course.”

Jaro nodded, smiled and seemed to fall asleep. Althea sat watching him, pondering, wondering. It seemed as if the surprises would never end! Someday, mused Althea, Jaro’s fragmented memory might again be made whole—quite possibly a sad day for Jaro.

Doctor Wanish, however, had indicated that the baneful recollections had been destroyed, which, if true, would be good news. Otherwise, Jaro’s prognosis was favorable, and he seemed to have suffered no permanent damage other than what Wanish had called “a mnemonic void.”

The Faths were childless. When they came to visit Jaro at the hospital, he greeted them with obvious pleasure which tugged at their hearts. Arriving at a decision, they filled out a few documents, paid as many fees, and when they returned to Thanet on Gallingale, Jaro accompanied them. Presently he was legally adopted, and began to use the name Jaro Fath.

Society without ritual is like music played on a single string with one finger.” Such was the dictum of Unspiek, Baron Bodissey in his monumental
LIFE
. He pointed out further: “Whenever human beings join to pursue a common objective—that is, to form a society—each member of the group will ultimately command a certain status. As all of us know, these status levels are never totally rigid.”

At Thanet on the world Gallingale, the quest for status was the dominant social force. Social levels, or “ledges,” were exactly defined, and distinguished by the social clubs which occupied and gave character to that particular ledge. Most prestigious of all the clubs were the so-called Sempiternals: the Tattermen, the Clam Muffins, the Quantorsi; membership in such clubs was tantamount to the prestige of high aristocracy.

The stuff of social advancement—“comporture”—could not easily be defined. Its main components were aggressive striving up the ledges, gentility, wealth and personal mana. Everyone was a social arbiter; eyes watched for uncouth behavior; ears listened to hear what should not have been said. A moment’s lapse, a tactless remark, an absentminded glance might negate months of striving. To presume to a status one had not earned was met with instant rebuff. The perpetrator would incur wondering contempt, and might well be branded a “schmeltzer.”
[5]

Hilyer and Althea Fath, though well respected at the Institute, were “nimps,” and lived without knowing either the joys of “comporture” or the even more intense pangs of rejection.
[6]

The Faths lived four miles north of Thanet, in Merriehew, a rambling old farmhouse situated on five hundred acres of rough countryside, where Althea’s grandfather had once engaged in experimental horticulture. The tract was now considered wilderness, and included a pair of forested knolls, a river, a high pasture, a water meadow and a copse of dense woods. All evidence of the horticultural experiments had been lost under the forest mold.

Jaro was assigned living quarters at the top of the high-ceilinged old house. His early troubles faded from memory. Hilyer and Althea were affectionate and tolerant: the best of parents. Jaro, in his turn, brought them pride and fulfillment; before long they could not imagine life without him, and they were haunted by an insidious worry: was Jaro truly happy at Merriehew?

For a time Jaro showed a tendency toward introversion, which accentuated their worry, but which they finally ascribed to his frightening early experiences. They were reluctant to ask questions for fear of intruding upon his privacy, though Jaro was not naturally secretive and would have answered their questions without restraint, had they asked.

The Faths had supposed correctly. The moods derived from Jaro’s past. As Doctor Wanish had predicted, a few shreds of the shattered mnemonic clots had rearranged themselves along the old matrices, to generate an occasional image, which swirled away before Jaro could focus upon it. The two most vivid of these images were of quite different sorts. Both were heavy with emotion. One or the other might appear whenever Jaro’s mind was passive, or tired, or half asleep.

The first, possibly the earliest, induced a sad sweet ache which brought tears to Jaro’s eyes. He seemed to be looking over a beautiful garden, silver and black in the light of two pale moons. Sometimes there was a shudder of displacement, as if Jaro might be someone else. But how could this be? It was himself, Jaro, who stood by the low marble balustrade looking over the moonlit garden, out to the tall dark forest beyond.

There was nothing more to the recollection; it was brief and dreamlike, but it afflicted Jaro with longing for something, or somewhere, forever lost. It was a scene of tragic beauty, rife with an odd nameless emotion: the humiliation of something innocent and gorgeous, so that the throat choked with sorrow and the pain of lost grandeur and pity.

The second of the images, more powerful and vivid, never failed to strike terror into his soul. The gaunt shape of a man stood silhouetted against the luminous twilight sky. The man wore a flat-crowned hat with a stiff brim; a tight black magister’s coat. He stood with legs apart, brooding across the landscape. When he turned his head to stare at Jaro, his eyes seemed to glitter like small four-pointed stars.

As time passed, the images came ever less frequently. Jaro became more confident and his periods of reverie waned and were gone; Jaro was everything for which the Faths might have hoped, unusual only in that he was neat, orderly, soft-spoken and dependable.

This halcyon time seemed as if it might go on forever. Then one day Jaro became aware of something he had not noticed before: an uneasy weight at the edge of his consciousness, as if he had forgotten something important. The feeling went away, leaving Jaro in a mood of depression, for which he could find no explanation. Two weeks later, after he had gone to bed, the sensation returned, along with a near-inaudible sound, like the mutter of distant thunder. Jaro lay stiffly, looking up into the dark, tingling to the nearness of something eery. After a minute the sound was gone and he lay limp, wondering what might be happening to him.

Spring became summer. One evening, with the Faths out attending a seminar, Jaro heard the sound again. He put down his book and strained to listen. From far away he thought to hear a low-pitched human voice, expressive of grief and pain. There was no articulation of words.

At first Jaro was puzzled rather than concerned, but the sounds became distinct and ever more woeful. Could they represent a simple seepage from his dead memory: the aftermath of dark deeds mercifully forgotten? A theory as reasonable as any. He listened to the sounds with as much detachment as he could muster, until they drifted away into silence.

Jaro sat in a state of bafflement. Without conviction he told himself that the sounds were no more than a minor nuisance which sooner or later would dwindle to nothing.

This was not the case. From time to time Jaro continued to hear the woeful sounds. They wavered in and out of definition, as if originating in a place sometimes near, sometimes far. It was most confusing, and Jaro presently gave up any attempt at analysis.

As time passed the sounds became more immediate, as if they were deliberately challenging Jaro’s composure. Often they intruded into his mind when he could ill afford the distraction. He thought to detect malice and hatred, which made the sounds frightening. Jaro finally decided that they were telepathic messages from an unknown enemy: an idea no less far-fetched than any other. A dozen times he started to confide in the Faths; as many times he held back, not wishing to excite Althea.

Who could be causing such a dreary nuisance? The voice came and went without regularity. Jaro grew resentful; no one else suffered such persecution! It clearly derived from the occluded early years of his life, and Jaro made a resolve he was never to abandon: as soon as possible he would explore all the mysteries and learn all the truths. He would locate the source of the voice and release it from its torment.

Questions marched across his mind. Who am I? How did I come to be lost? Who was the gaunt man who stood so dark and ominous against the twilight sky? His questions, clearly, would never be answered on Gallingale, so that only one course lay open. Despite the certain opposition of the Faths, he must become a spaceman.

When Jaro thought these thoughts, he felt an eery tingling of the skin, which he took to be a presage of the future—whether for good or for bad he could not guess. Meanwhile, he must find a means to deal with the nuisance which had invaded his mind.

As time passed, he found that the most effective strategy was simply to ignore the voice and let it drone on unheeded.

Still, the voice persisted, as dreary as ever, returning at intervals ranging from two weeks to a month. A year passed. Jaro applied himself to his schoolwork and ascended the levels of Langolen School. The Faths provided him everything but what they themselves had renounced: high social status, which could only be gained by “striving” up through a series of ever more prestigious social clubs.

At the tip of the pyramid the three Sempiternals maintained a precarious stability. These were the mysterious Quantorsi—so preferential that the membership was limited to nine—the equally exclusive Clam Muffins and the Tattermen. The Sempiternals were unique in that their members enjoyed hereditary privileges denied the common ruck. Next below were the Bon-tons and the steady old Palindrome. The Lemurians asserted equal status but were considered a bit recherché.

To the ledges an iota below clung Bustamonte, Val Verde and the Sasselton Tigers. Claiming equal status were the Sick Chickens and the Scythians: both considered a trifle extravagant and hyper-modern. At the bottom layer of the “Respectables” (though indignantly asserting otherwise) were the four Quadrants of the Squared Circle: the Kahulibahs, the Zonkers, the Bad Gang and the Naturals. Each claimed preeminence, while half-jocularly deriding the deficiencies of the others. Each expressed a particular character. The Kahulibahs included more financial magnates, while the Zonkers tolerated unconventional types, including musicians and artists of a decent sort. The Naturals were dedicated to the refinements of decorous hedonism, while the Bad Gang included a contingent of top level Institute faculty. Still, all taken with all, there was little difference between any of the quadrants, despite the sometimes rather shrill claims to supreme status, and a few incidents of hair-pullings, slapped faces, and the occasional suicide.

The Quadrants of the Squared Circle, like all middle-status clubs, were anxious to recruit high-quality new members, but even more anxious to exclude outsiders, schmeltzers and bounders.

For Jaro it came as a surprise and a shock to learn that both his beloved foster parents and he himself were considered “nimps.” Jaro was shamed and indignant. Hilyer only laughed. “It makes no difference to us. It’s not important! Is it fair? Probably not, but what of that? According to Baron Bodissey: ‘Only losers cry out for fair play.’ ”
[7]

To this day the most erudite thinkers of the Gaean Reach ponder the significance of the remark.

Jaro quickly learned that, like Hilyer and Althea, he had no inclination for social striving. At Langolen School he was neither gregarious nor socially aggressive; he took no part in group activities and competed in no sports or games. Such conduct was not admired, and Jaro made few friends. When it became known that his parents were nimps and when he showed no comporture of his own, he became even more isolated, despite his neat garments and well-scrubbed appearance. In the classroom, however, he excelled, so that his instructors considered him almost on a par with the notorious Skirlet Hutsenreiter, whose intellectual prowess was the talk of the school, as were her haughty and imperious mannerisms. Skirlet was a year or two younger than Jaro: a slender erect little creature so strongly charged with intelligence and vitality that, in the words of the school nurse, she “gave off blue sparks in the dark.” Skirlet carried herself like a boy, though she was clearly a girl, and far from ill-favored. A cap of thick dark hair clasped her face; eyes of a particularly luminous gray looked from under fine black eyebrows; flat cheeks slanted down to a small decisive chin, with a stern little nose and a wide mercurial mouth above. Skirlet seemed to lack personal vanity, and she dressed so simply that her instructors sometimes wondered as to the solicitude of her parents—all the more surprising, since her father was the Honorable Clois Hutsenreiter, Dean of the College of Philosophy at the Institute, a transworld financier, purportedly of great wealth, and—more importantly—a Clam Muffin, at the very apex of the status pyramid. And her mother, Espeine? Here there seemed to be hints, if not of scandal, at least of some high-status irregularity, very spicy, if the gossip could be believed. Skirlet’s mother now resided in a splendid palace on the world Marmone, where she was Princess of the Dawn. How and why this should be no one seemed to know, or dared to ask.

Skirlet made no attempt to gain the approval of her classmates. Some of the boys grumbled that she was sexless, cold as a dead fish, because she ignored their routines. During the lunch period, Skirlet often went out to sit on the terrace, where she would attract a group of acquaintances. On these occasions, Skirlet was sometimes gracious, sometimes moody, and sometimes she would jump to her feet and walk away. In the classroom she tended to complete her work with insulting facility; then, flinging down her stylus, she would look around at the other students with patronizing amusement. She also had the unsettling habit of glancing up sharply should the instructor carelessly make a mistake, or indulge in some lame facetiousness. The instructors were nonplussed, especially since Skirlet never spoke with other than cool politeness. In the end they treated her with wary respect. When they gathered in the faculty lounge during the lunch hour, Skirlet often came under discussion. Some disliked her with bitterness and spite; others were more temperate, and pointed out that she was still barely adolescent, with small experience of the world. Mr. Ollard, the erudite sociology instructor, analyzed Skirlet in terms of psychological imperatives: “She’s intellectually vain and even intolerant—to a degree which transcends simple arrogance, to become an Elemental Principle: a real achievement for a person so young and slight of physique.” He thought it best not to say that he found her captivating.

“She’s not a bad girl,” said Dame Wirtz. “There’s nothing vicious or mean in her nature, though of course she can be quite exasperating.”

“She’s a little snip,” said Dame Borkle. “She needs a good spanking.”

Since Skirlet was a Clam Muffin by birth, while Jaro, a nimp, commanded no prestige whatever, there was small chance for communication between the two, and even less for any social connection. Jaro had already discovered that some girls were prettier than others. At the upper end of the list he included Skirlet Hutsenreiter. He liked her taut little body and the swagger with which she conducted her affairs. Unfortunately, it was not Skirlet, but Dame Idora Wirtz, the middle-aged mathematics instructor, who found Jaro a charm and a delight. Jaro was so handsome, so clean, so innocent that she could barely restrain herself from seizing him and hugging him until he squeaked like a kitten. Jaro sensed her inclinations and kept out of reach.