Chapter 15
The moaning of the wolves filled the frigid air of the fading twilight. Indigo and D’naia had already eaten their dinner and were warming by the stove of their cabin when they were startled by a knock at the door.
“Don’t answer it,” D’naia pleaded, grabbing hold of Indigo’s arm.
“It’s all right. I’m expecting someone.”
“Who?”
Indigo gently pulled loose from her grasp and went to the door. He swung it open. In the doorway, illuminated by the glow of the firelight, stood before them a spaceman. What it meant— an astronaut, ominously framed in hewn pine and illuminated by the light of an archaic stove— was indecipherable to Indigo. Maybe the Sunstein Agents really were into elaborate mind games after all. But Indigo couldn’t plot where this game would lead but the anachronism— astronaut and log cabin— burned into his mind.
“Take off your helmet,” Indigo ordered.
The astronaut remained still, flickers of reflected flame danced in his black flash shield.
“Take off your helmet,” Indigo ordered, again.
D’naia rose from her chair, wrapped her shawl tightly around herself against the cold pouring in and backed slowly into the shadows of the sleeping area.
“This is the last time I’m going to tell you. Take off your helmet or I’ll rip it off your head myself.”
The spaceman complied, gradually raising his gloved hands and twisting loose the fasteners. Twist. Twist. Twist. He clasping the orb with both hands at the ears. Then slowly he lifted it upwards off his head. His face, bearded and emaciated, was not immediately recognizable to Indigo, but it couldn’t have been a Sunstein Agent any more than the man bear was. But then haggard the visitor smiled which revealed his identity to Indigo. He was Indigo’s lost brother… his twin, birthed by the womb of the Astarte.
“So you’re alive, then?”
“Yes, Indigo, more than ever,” Staley answered, in a voice deeper and slower and more gravelly than Indigo had remembered it. “Are you going to invite me in?”
D’naia stood behind the bed staring at the ascetic in space garb standing at the door as the dogs of doom howled and moaned in the night. She interrupted Indigo just as he prepared to answer. “Don’t invite that Sunstein Agent into our house. He’s come to have us reformatted,” she exclaimed.
“If I was coming for you then don’t you think I’d bring weapons and a posse? Go look outside for yourself. There’s no posse out their except for the wolves,” Staley explained. “And they don’t take orders from me.”
“How do I know you’re not a wolf in astronaut’s clothing?” Indigo asked.
“Because I’ve come to warn you of the real wolves. And because if I were one of them, it wouldn’t be any benefit to me to warn you.”
“It’s okay, D’naia,” Indigo explained. “Come in, Staley.” He put Staley into his chair nearest the stove so that he could warm himself. He closed the door and braced it with a crossmember.
“Do you have anything to eat?” Staley asked.
D’naia shook herself loose from her terror and went to the cupboard to fetch him some salted venison and soy cube rations.
“Where’ve you been?” Indigo asked. “I thought you were dead.”
“I was dead but then I was reborn. I’ve been to another world, Indigo.”
“You look much older to me.”
“I am… in spirit.”
“He looks thin,” D’naia remarked, as she brought him a bowl and a mug with fresh water. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”
“I eat saplings every day and today I ate a raw trout. It was a feast.”
“You look frail. We need to get you to a doctor.”
“I’m fine,” Staley replied with a grin. “One’s girth is not always an indicator of one’s health. Besides, I didn’t come back here to be put under anesthesia again.”
“What did you come for, then?” asked Indigo.
“Isn’t it obvious? I came here for you. I came here for you and for her… the three of you.”
“How do you know about that,” D’naia asked.
Staley answered her only with a smile. “I have seen things with new eyes, Indigo. I have heard things with new ears. There is no going back to the dead. There is only going forward, now, forward into life.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Indigo asked.
“You know the difference between life and un-death, Indigo. I know you felt it when we were a hundred million miles from here. I know you felt it because I was feeling it, too. We experienced it together, together in that titanium. I know you felt it when the plasma inducers no longer induced and our DNA started to unravel by the solar radiation. I know you felt it when the crew went insane. I knew you felt it when Cain got the illness.”
“What are you talking about?’
“I’m talking about the difference between life and un-death… Living and existing are not the same. Man cannot live on protein powder alone.” Staley ripped and chewed the dried venison that D’naia had provided him. His teeth had grown strong in the absence of genetically modified grains and the Gaiastan approved diet of synthetic sugars. The dried meat seemed to invigorate him. He took a drink of water and then a deep breath, savoring the crude meal. “The difference between life and un-death… Yes. It means that you and I are spiritual beings. We are humans, not bees. This is what I came to understand while I was with my new family. It means that man cannot live by some program or order or routine. Man cannot live merely for the hive. Man must have virtue or he ceases being alive. It means that, as human beings, we must have our free will. Without it, we devolve into savagery, following orders or our whims without reason or conscience. Without free will, there can be no virtue. Without virtue, man is capable of any form of violence and evil. The Paradigm has stripped man of his virtue, Indigo. It has turned men into slaves… slaves to the hive. Man exists now only for his rations and his merriments. He follows his orders without thinking. Gather that. Clean this. Build that. Destroy this. Heal her. Kill him. It matters naught what the order is, so long as it comes from the hive. And so man has lost his virtue and has thus his humanity. The Paradigm has rendered him nothing better than a soulless worker bee.
We were worker bees once, Indigo. But we aren’t anymore. You know you can’t stay here. The drones are coming for the three of you. They take their orders, too, and their orders are that no one leaves the hive alive.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?”
“Just listen to me, for now. Let me tell you how I got from there to here. There was despair, Indigo. The despair grew within me. The despair grew while we cast our lots in that space can a hundred million miles from here. I stepped off the ledge then, Indigo. I stepped off the ledge when we cast lots over who should live and who should die. My brain could reconcile it, but my mind… my spirit could not.”
“I don’t believe in spirits and I don’t need to revisit the Astarte,” Indigo protested.
“Indigo, the brain is flesh and the flesh is weak. But the mind is more than the brain, Indigo. The mind is the vessel for the spirit. Our brains were conditioned but our our spirits were not because they cannot be programmed. The spirit cannot be conditioned, Indigo. The spirit of man will not join a hivemind. The spirit knows what virtue is.
The spirit calls out in each of us but the voice is soft and low. It flows in the mind beneath the chemical reactions of the brain. It flows like a warm undercurrent beneath a turbulent sea. The brain is flesh and the flesh is weak, Indigo. The brain calls out loudly. It ignores the spirit. It resists the spirit. It drowns it out.”
“What do you wnat from me, Staley?”
“This was my struggle, Indigo. This was our struggle. They turned us into worker bees… busy bees, always busy, buzzing, bee-having, beeing bees. To bee or not to bee, that is the question. I know you see it, Indigo. To survive, we suppressed the spirit. But that was not living, that was merely surviving. We both know the spirit can never be extinguished, Indigo. It lives even when trapped in the flesh. It will kill the flesh before the flesh kills it.”
Indigo buried his face in his hands. The anguish and guilt of their fate in the Astarte had rushed into him like hemlock.
“We saved our flesh by casting lots but we were only fooling ourselves, Indigo. We tried to kill the spirit when we ejected the contents of the airlock into the void. And yes, we did do it because we did not stop it. But the flesh cannot kill the spirit. Our brains failed at thier orders, Indigo. We failed. Our brains failed because you cannot save lives by killing the spirit.”
D’naia listened intently as she shoved another log into the stove. Indigo had never told her about the things Staley was revealing.
“What good would it do to kill a spirit, anyway, Indigo? What good I ask you? Many try to do it. They allow themselves to be medicated by the inanity and ritual and substances of modern life. But what kind of life is it for them? What point would life be without a spirit? To go out and gather nectar and serve it to the drones? Is that a good life? To do one’s duty for the hive? Is that the meaning of life? And for what reward? So that we may be allowed to drink the excriments that the drones leave behind after they’ve engorged themselves? That’s the Paradigm, Indigo. Who created that paradigm, I ask? You know who did. The drones did. They invented the system. They tricked you and I into becoming worker bee. But they will ultimately fail, Indigo. For like I said, you cannot kill the spirit. The spirit lives. The flesh may rage against it. The brain may rage against it. Sometimes the rage is turned outward, viciously, openly, sometimes covertly, passively, but the flesh rages against the spirit.
And my rage turned inward, Indigo.
That is where I found myself. That is where I was when I put on my space suit and walked out of Hegeltown and across the moraine and up into the mountains to die. I wanted to kill the spirit that had caused me so much anguish, Indigo. I injected the last of my opium into my veins to kill the flesh and the spirit along with it. I wanted my body to die and then the brain to be resurrected in virtual immortality without pain or doubt or fear. But I could not kill it, Indigo. My spirit would not die. It was not my time. They found me, first. And that is how I got from there to here.”
“Who found you?”
“They are who they are. The Gaians call them ‘unhumans’ and other insults, yet they are more human than any Gaian.”
“They’re cannibals,” Indigo declared.
“Cannibals? The wretched ones? Savages? Unhumans? All lies! They live, Indigo. They live. It is a hard life but they live it fully. They do not need to extrude their tongues and prostrate themselves to receive their rations. They are not bound to any hive. They are not slaves to any drone.
They found me on that rock in the woods and they carried me away with the needle still stuck in my vein. They nursed me back to consciousness and then back to health. They resurrected me, Indigo.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I was a man who needed help and they came to my aid because they have virtue.”
D’naia interrupted them. “They probably helped you because you are a celebrity and they intend to use you. It sounds to me like you just changed hives.”
“I am free to do as I please. I’m not bound to them. They were not compelled to help me. They helped me because it was their virtue. But not a virtue beholden to some abstract concept but rather their personal sense of duty to their fellow man. Their spirit would not allow them to leave me to die.
I could stay out there as one of them if I chose to, but you are correct in that my ‘celebrity’ gives me standing. Not standing with the unhumans who rescued me, mind you, but rather with the undermen of Gaiastan. My ‘celebrity’ means I can reach them and help some of them. Not many. Only a few of them… a few of them who have ears that will hear. But I must try. I have been given much and from me much is expected. Now that I have seen how a man can live I can’t help but to try and help others to see it as well. That is my duty to my fellow man. That is my gift to the few. My spirit cannot just allow them to die.”
“So now you’re their prophet?”
‘No. I’m your prophet.”
D’naia had made her way to the window to look out at the darkeness. Somewhere in that night lurked the wolves that had stopped moaning at the cold. She sensed them. They were near. “So what do you want us to do, then?” She asked.
“As I said, you cannot stay here,” Staley explained. “Gaiastan has orders for the three of you. They’ve set the Sunstein Agents loose. Don’t worry, your guide will explain it all.”
“Our guide?” Indigo asked.
“The Sunstein Agents will come and they will haul you back to Gaiastan where some terrible fate awaits. You must be prepared to leave as soon as possible. Be ready, even tonight, for your guide may come at any moment.”
“Who is this guide?”
“You’ve already met him. He wears a bearskin.”
“Joe Hannan. Where will he take us?”
“He’ll lead you as far as he can on the path to the living. It will be an awakening of the spirit of man. There will be a sacrifice.”
“Why can’t we go with you?” D’naia asked?
“Because I have work to do. I’m going into Hegeltown.”
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