Part 1 of 2
Chapter 29
Florida was a small city built between a wide crescent of beach along a tropical bay and a low range of wooded maritime alps, mere hills if truth be told, which neatly defined its inland boundaries, though as one would expect, many of the most extravagant manses were sited along the haute corniche which ran just below the crestline on the seaside slope. The bay was blue, the sands quite a striking rose, and the foliage of the hillsides tended to pastel tones of reddish-green. The sky was a brilliant azure, and the waters of the bay were sprinkled with a score or more small sandy islands upon which grew no more than sparse clumps of some purplish salt grass.
Amusement piers and covered pavilions jutted out into the bay here and there and the waters themselves sported all manner of pleasure craft, though sails seemed to be favored, and blue, rose, and white were the dominant tints thereof.
Indeed to style Florida a small city might be going too far, for in truth it was more of a large town decorating the bay with a fringe of low and deliberately unobtrusive buildings whose precincts could be covered from end to end on a balmy afternoon's stroll. By unstated agreement, mayhap by legislative fiat, no structure rose more than four stories, and most were done up in white, rose. or blue, so as to harmonize with the color scheme of the landscape. As for fabriks, these were nowhere in evidence, and those edifices given over to commerce were confined to small inns, restaurants, boutiques, tavernas, and the like. Some small open floatcabs were available, but for the most part the populace seemed to favor traveling afoot.
In short, upon debarking at seaside from the hover which had borne me from Lorienne, I found myself in a scene of bucolic tranquility and benign isolation from the hurly-burly of the centers of the civilized worlds, a venue for vacationers and sportsvolk or for those who preferred a vie of mellow retreat from urban complexities. Strange to say, the ambiance thereof put me in mind of Nouvelle Orlean somehow, after so many weeks of treetop wilderness on the one hand, and the flagrantly ersatz environments of Edoku, Ciudad Pallas, and Void Ships on the other, though certainement Florida was Nouvelle Orlean writ quite small and modest.
As for locating the venue where Pater Pan was most likely to be found. this was simplicity itself, for even from the beach I could readily enough spy out a sprinkling of varicolored tents set on a shelf of land about three quarters of the way up the slope of an overlooking hillside.
Eschewing floatcabs, I forthwith set out inland afoot through the streets of the town toward the hillside in question. These were paved, or rather strewn, with a particolored gravel made up of tiny marine shells and the fragments of larger ones which crunched pleasantly enough underfoot as one trod upon them.
The denizens of the town seemed divided up into two distinct species: somewhat pallid urbanites obviously on holiday, and well-bronzed natives who were clearly in the minority. Breechclouts, shorts, halters, und so weiter were the favored attire, nor were nude bodies lacking, though naturellement the esthetic effect of all this bare flesh was a good deal more pleasing when it came to the handsome natives than when it came to the turistas. Peculiarly enough, though there was a plethora of youth in evidence, and though such a resort community would seem to be ideal for such enterprises, there seemed to be no organized troupes of buskers, hawkers, ruespielers, und so weiter on these promising streets.
Nevertheless, the sun shone brightly, the town presented a pleasing aspect, the balmy air was redolent with vegetative sweetness and salty sea-tang. and my spirits soared against all knowledgeable trepidations, for it was difficult indeed to credit such a setting as the venue for such dark and urban horrors as Charge Addiction.
Nor was my mood anything but lightened when, puffing a bit and lightly filmed with sweat, I reached the shelf upon which the caravanserei was situated. While this encampment had nothing of the size and grandeur of that which the Gypsy Jokers had established in Great Edoku, the sight of it filled my heart with a rosy nostalgic glow for the Golden Summer I had enjoyed as a newborn Child of Fortune therein. And though this encampment boasted no more than a score or two tents of various sizes, shapes, and colors, the view therefrom put what I had known in Edoku to shame. From the outskirts of the caravanserei, I looked out over the shaggy shoulders of the hillside, down across the tiny houses of the town and the shining rose-colored beach to a shining azure sea upon which minuscule sails of blue and white and rose drifted in the breezes like a swarm of brightly-colored sea-midges.
Only when I entered the encampment itself did the spell of peaceful and perfect beauty begin to unravel.
For one thing, there was a preponderance of scarcely-pubescent Alpans in evidence, obviously hardly of an age to be Children of Fortune of other worlds embarked upon their wanderjahrs, and while some of these wore the Cloth of Many Colors, their scarves and sashes were patched together out of swatches of new cloth rather than being the fairly-won emblems of a wandering vie.
Moreover, and more disturbing still, there was almost nothing in the way of crafts or finger food or street theater troupes or musicians or even tantric performers to be seen, as if, as I soon found out to be true, this encampment was living primarily on the largesse of not-too-distant parents. The few true Children of Fortune that I spied seemed a rather unwholesome lot, too long in the tooth for the vie, mayhap predators gathered to prey upon the energies, not to say the parental subsidies, of the young Alpans.
As for the activities which were taking place, these were hardly calculated to cast credit on the mythos. Many young folk were lying about in an obvious state of red-eyed stupefaction. Others could be seen gulping down great drafts of wine or imbibing various toxicants, and what commerce I noted was mainly in these commodities. Here and there couples, and groups were engaged in rather feckless tantric exercises of little or no artistry and not much more energy. Scraps of food were scattered everywhere as well as empty flagons attended by small yellow insects, and the general aroma, if not quite overpowering, reeked more of decaying organic matter and unwashed bodies than of perfumed incenses and cuisinary savors.
I loathed the ambiance I experienced as I wandered the camp under the indifferent gazes of its inhabitants, which is to say I dreaded what I would discover at its center, for I knew only too well who and what that would be. Nor was I long in seeking out the locus thereof, for near the center of the encampment was the largest tent of all, a closed pavilion sewn together out of Cloth of Many Colors.
I was accosted at the flap which concealed the interior of the tent by a rather scruffy and bleary- eyed fellow perhaps five years my senior who barred my way and thrust a chip transcriber under my nose. "Four credit units for an audience with the Oracle," he told me.
"What? Quelle chose? What is this outrage?"
"A small price to pay for the true voice of the Up and Out," he said with lofty diffidence. "Try to obtain the same elsewhere on Alpa at more modest cost if you wish, and see how far it will get you."
"Merde!" I muttered angrily, but I handed over my chip rather than haggle over such a pittance with this churl for another moment. After the required credit was transferred, he held open the tent flap and admitted me to the unwholesome inner sanctum.
The interior of the tent was strewn with dusty and threadbare cushions. Upon these some dozen acolytes sat, reclined, or indeed dozed, in varying degrees of stupefaction, swilling wines and beers, sniffing at toxicants, and focusing various states of befuddled attention upon the figure propped up in a large nest of pillows in the center of the tent like some pathetic pasha.
Vraiment, it was Pater Pan.
But alas, not the Pater Pan I had known.
His Traje de Luces hung in loose folds about his gaunt frame. His golden hair and beard were unkempt and scraggly and streaked with gray. His skin was seamed and sallow, and there were hollows in his cheeks and dark baggy wrinkles under his eyes. His eyes ...
His wonderful blue eyes seemed larger and brighter than before, set off now in deep shadowed sockets, yet vague, and fragile somehow, like balls of shattered blue marble. About his brow was the metallic band of the Charge, wired to a console all but hidden within his throne of pillows.
A young girl stood before him intently as if receiving wisdom. And Pater Pan was indeed speaking, albeit with eyes that seemed focused on some middle distance, and in a hollow declamatory tone that seemed addressed to no one or everyone in particular.
"Tarry not in the mean streets of Hamelin town, but follow me into the Magic Mountain ..."
"Does that mean that I should now commence my wanderjahr?"
"Fear not the Gypsy King, gajo, for we must all one day be stolen from our parents' houses, and run away to join the circus ..."
"But now you say I must await a sign?"
"As a ronin, I know no master but honor ..."
"But --"
"Enough!" said an older girl squatting at the feet of Pater Pan. "You have already had fair value for your four credits!"
Eagerly, a boy arose from the front ranks and elbowed her aside, "How am I to gain the affection of Krista, Pater Pan?" he demanded.
"Be not a swinish wage slave of the Pentagon, but embark in the Gold Mountain on the long slow centuries between the stars, and follow the Arkie Spark within you ..."
I stood there in the back of the tent for many minutes, appalled, disgusted, transfixed, and despairing, as one by one paying customers were ushered in and out of the presence to hector Pater Pan with their picayune questions and receive in turn this Delphic babble.
I had sufficiently steeped myself in the scientific lore to know that what I beheld was a man who had long since gone beyond the point of no return on the path to the Up and Out.
"The King of the Gypsies is no more, long live the Prince of the Jokers, though of course they are very small mountains ..."
For while the cadences and music of this flow of words had a certain hypnagogic fascination that drew the mind's ear down into its murky depths, in truth, I knew, these were isolated and fragmented memory-quanta being released in the absence of a sovereign pattern. No Charge Addict who had progressed to this stage had ever returned as a sapient spirit to the worlds of men, for the integrated personality by now was not merely suppressed but erased forever, or so the mages declared, leaving only disconnected cerebral data banks firing off their memories at random.
"Before the singer, I was the song, which we followed along the Yellow Brick Road from the ancestral trees to trip the life fantastic out among the stars ..."
The Pater Pan whom I had known and loved was gone forever, or so science insisted, and were I to now rip the band from his head against all the efforts of these wretched acolytes to the contrary, all that I would succeed in rescuing would be a halfling creature such as I now beheld who would linger a few years thusly in the care of the Healers of some mental retreat.
I was too late. That faceless force which had claimed Guy Vlad Boca had somehow indeed contrived to claim even the noble Pater Pan, as if to avenge itself upon me for my singular triumph over it as the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt in the most ghastly manner at its disposal.
Yet if I could truly do nothing, neither could I let it be, for as Wendi would have had it, and as I now understood in a state of rage that transcended reason, now was the time for a futile gesture.
I strode boldly and forcefully to the front of the tent, superseding those waiting their turn at their oracle before me without demur, for the energy of my passage brooked none such in this company,
"Pater! It's Sunshine!" I cried.
"In the Summer of Love in the city by the bay, we all wore flowers in our hair ...."
His preternaturally bright yet entirely empty eyes seemed to stare right through me, and his babble, for all I could tell, was for the benefit of these callow creatures who hung on every word of it as much as for myself.
"Merde!" I shouted, fairly trembling with fury. "You are Pater Pan, and I am Sunshine Shasta Leonardo, and once we were friends and lovers in Great Edoku! Do you remember nothing of our time together?"
"The caravans of the Gypsies and the Tinkers singing the only tale there is to tell in the black forest of the night ..."
"Merde! Caga! Speak to me, Pater, as a natural man, and not as the voice from a cerebral whirlwind!"
"Cease addressing the master thusly!"
"You've had your four units' worth!"
"Give someone else their turn!"
I whirled on the clamor that had arisen behind me, feeling almost as much true personal puissance in this company as that which I thespically injected into my voice, "Silence, churls!" I commanded, "I am Sunshine Shasta Leonardo, the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt, and I would discourse with my old comrade and lover with no further unseemly interruption from the likes of you!"
While the chance that any of those present had the slightest notion of who or what the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt might be was vanishingly slim, so spiritless were these sorry excuses for Children of Fortune that my words, my demeanor, and the force behind them were quite sufficient to cow them. Far from mitigating my ire, the respectful attitudes of obeisance which they then all assumed, even down to the oracle's timekeeper, only served to arouse my utter contempt, for no true Child of Fortune of my acquaintance would have bowed so meekly to the mere assertion of authority.
"Remember, Pater, please remember," I cajoled Pater Pan, imploringly now, seeking to feel with my words for the smallest purchase with which to pry open this shell and reach the natural man within. "Remember when you were the King of the Gypsies and the Prince of the Jokers? Remember? Do you not remember a time in a garden atop a waterfall? Do you not remember how I seized hold of your lingam in a shower stall? Do you not remember the Sunshine that you named? Do you not remember the night you told me what was in your heart of hearts?"
Pater Pan's face at last slowly turned in my direction like a leaf following the sun, but still his gaze seemed to stare right through me. "Remember ...?" he said. "Remember ...? Remember ...?"
"Yes, Pater, remember! Remember Sunshine, oh please, bitte, kudasai, liebchen, remember me!"
"Remember Sunshine ... I remember Sunshine beneath the towering red trees of the great forest ... I remember a Sunshine in my arms as we made love on the wing in the long slow centuries between the stars ... I remember a Sunshine on Novi Mir ... I remember a Sunshine on Edoku ... I remember a Sunshine on Elysium ... Remember the Sunshine of my life along the Yellow Brick Road ..."
This at last was far more than I could countenance! If the spell that I must counter was that of the electronic mastery of the Charge over the higher centers of his brain, if the power of the Word now failed me, then I must resort to the employment of electronic powers of my own. I must use the ring whose puissance I had not sought to employ for pleasure or gain since it had worse than failed me in the Perfumed Garden. I must resume my erotic career at once, any lack of piquant or quotidian desire to the contrary, for I could see nothing for it but to seize him by that kundalinic root which customarily overrides all cogitative imperatives when gripped by feminine force.
To wit, I thumbed on my ring of Touch, and to the oohs and gasps of the voyeurs in the tent, grabbed hold through the fabric of his trousers of his flaccid phallus. "If you remember nothing else, mon ami, mayhap you will remember this!"
Did his glassy eyes widen? Did some human light return thereto? Certainement, though with unseemly slowness, I felt the sap of manhood rise within my grasp. Strange indeed it was to feel the serpent stirring in a lingam once more after my long celibacy in a venue and a moment such as this! Stranger still, and somehow unwholesome, to feel the kundalinic knots uncoil within my own loins in such a pass, to find my natural woman once more via this most unnatural of tantric acts.
For long moments I stood there holding on for dear life to the handle of his phallus. For long moments did I gaze unwaveringly into his eyes, and for long moments did I imagine his true spirit looking back at me. Was it an extravagant fancy, or did I truly sense the hum and crackle of electronic combat between the dark power of the Charge and the kundalinic force at my command?
Be that as it may, at length his lips began to move again, and when they did, another spirit spoke, or so to me it seemed.
"The Sunshine of the magic touch ... She who out-joked the Joker ... On Edoku somewhere under the rainbow ..."
His voice grew firmer, as did his lingam in my hand, though the former still seemed to speak from very far away, and the latter only pulsed motionlessly in my grasp. "I remember a pool in a garden ... I remember a hand beneath a shower stall ... I remember a sister of the same spirit ..."
"Yes, Pater, yes!" I cried, squeezing the quick of him.
"I remember Great Edoku and I remember the ruins of We Who Have Gone Before and Babylon and Tyre I remember the summer of love and the night of the generals and I remember clambering from the trees to gaze in newborn wonder upon the sapient sunrise above the plain ...."
Merde, he was drifting away again, or mayhap he had never truly been there! Had it been only a chance concatenation of neurons firing in a burning brain which had seemed to speak for a moment as the natural man? Be that as it may, it was that natural man I had come here to hear; not the oracle of these worshipful urchins, but he who had chosen for reasons unknown to give his spirits over to the mercies, tender or otherwise, of the Charge, nor would I be content until I had summoned that Pater Pan forth and demanded why.
"No more of this Delphic babble!" I cried, yanking at his phallus as if I might extract by brute force alone that natural man. "Speak from the heart! How could you of all men have surrendered your spirit to the vileness of the Charge? Speak in the name of the spirit we once shared!"
Did I imagine now that a pale ghost of the old spark had returned to his eyes? Was that a rueful smile upon his lips?
"Moussa ..." he said. "My teller of tales has come to say good-bye ..."
"Why must you say good-bye, Pater? Why must this horrid thing be?"
"Je ne sais pas, muchacha," Pater Pan said, and now I was certain it was in some sense he. "All our Yellow Brick Roads must have an ending, though no one has ever told us why ..."
"Is this the man who once swore to experience all the far-flung worlds of men and bear witness to our species' tale entire?" I demanded behind tear-filled eyes.
"C'est moi, muchacha, he who rode the Arkie Spark through the long slow centuries in dreamless sleep, and who now has lost his race against time, which in the end not even I could win."
With a dreadful new understanding, I regarded his sunken frame, his fraying hair well-streaked with gray, his seamed and leathery skin. Thus had the dying babas of the Bloomenveldt appeared as they sat before their final flowers. The body's time had caught up to the spirit of the eternal Gypsy Joker at last, the hand of death lay on his shoulder.
"I remember all that I've ever been, muchacha, and even more that I haven't, and I remember all I said good-bye to before you summoned me forth," Pater Pan said, in a pained and mournful voice that had me fighting back sobs. "Only now I have to remember what we all spend our lives seeking to forget."
"Oh Pater, why?" I said tearfully. "If all our lives must end, must the noble tale of yours end like this?"
"The Inuit walks tranquilly out upon the ice to sit for one last eternal night under the frozen time of the stars. In Han of old at the end of our days we gave ourselves over to the poppy's lotus breath when the time came to let go our place upon the wheel. The Arkie freezes his Spark in the long slow centuries between the stars. The sage quaffs his psychotropic hemlock. The Prince of the Jokers travels, snap! snap! snap! like the Rapide into the Up and Out."
In my mind's eye, I saw the babas of the Bloomenveldt at peace with themselves beneath their final flowers, a peace quite literally beyond the understanding of one whose spirit and body could look forward to centuries of youth rather than weeks of terminal decay. Yet in my heart, I saw Guy Vlad Boca, a spirit who had chosen this selfsame mode of passage from sapient human consciousness in the full flower of adventurous youth.
"Weep not for me, girl," Pater Pan said. "The me you knew is already gone, and you are speaking with a Joker dybbuk he left behind to say good-bye. But I'm real enough to feel sad to leave the worlds all over again, and if you are still a sister of my spirit, you will let me go."
"I can truly do no other?" I asked from the depths of my spirit. For in that moment I was once more addressing myself to Guy as well as I turned my back on him in the depths of the Bloomenveldt and sought the lonely path of my own salvation. I had told myself then that I could do no other, nor in all the time between had I ever reconstructed a more fruitful course of action, but I had never really believed I had acted honorably in my heart of hearts until this very moment.
"You can only keep a mortal spirit in mortal torment," Pater Pan said, "after he who was at home has long since fled into unknown realms. I was happy when I went, for rather than expire in regretful agony, I chose to take one last journey down the Yellow Brick Road and see whatever there is to see in the final mystery of the Up and Out."
"May that road rise up to meet you, mi amor," I said, bursting into tears as I released my hold on the handle of the kundalinic machineries which had summoned forth this echo of the natural man.
Long had I chided myself for failing to risk the all of my own sapient spirit in a berserker effort to rescue Guy from his ultimate and terminal amusement. There in the depths of the Bloomenveldt I had turned my back and let the spirit of a friend and lover go, informed by no greater wisdom than the moral calculus of survival. Therefore had I secretly owned myself a coward in my heart of hearts.
Now, in this Tent of Many Colors, did the bitterest lesson of all yet grant me self-forgiveness, for now I knew to my dismay that greater love and courage of the spirit could sometimes be required to stand aside with an aching and uncomprehending heart and let be what must be.
Teary-eyed, shaking, not knowing what I felt, or even what I should properly feel, I turned to quit this place for the nearest venue of solitude, to find myself confronted with some dozen pair of mooningly worshipful eyes.
They were all staring at me as once they had stared at Pater Pan, as if I had anointed myself pythoness of their noxious cult, and established myself as the consort of their master. Thus had I ironically achieved what once I had so avidly sought, to preside over a Child of Fortune carnival at the Gypsy King's side! All the more did this perception enhance the distaste which I felt at being the focus of the miasma of fawning subservience which fairly exuded from these lost Children of Fortune like a cloying mist of vaporous treacle. Never had even Rollo, Dome, Goldenrod, and my Moussa regarded their Pied Piper thusly in the depths of the Bloomenveldt.
"What do you imagine you are staring at like that?" I demanded angrily.
"The Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt ..."
"Conjurer of mighty spirits ..."
"Pater Pan's true lady ..."
"Bah!" I snarled. "You call yourselves Children of Fortune? Conjure only with that spirit which moves through your own hearts, and give over your lust for all other gurus and deities, feckless urchins!"
So saying, I brushed aside, at least for the moment, their vapid attentions, and stormed like a whirlwind out of the thanatotic shadows of the tent into the bright clean glare of day.
***
But naturellement, I could not leave the encampment with the final chapter of Pater Pan's tale yet untold, nor for that matter could I snatch many moments of solitude from the entirely unwelcome solicitations of its inhabitants with which I was all-but-constantly surrounded from the moment I left the tent.
No sooner had I emerged into daylight than I found myself the center of a ragged little mob of acolytes who thrust food and wine and toxicants upon me and who trailed after me like pathetic puppies wherever I went. The former I waved away with impatient gestures, but as for my train of would-be followers, even shouts and imprecations would only drive them off a certain distance, a score meters or so, from which vantage they kept me under constant observation, tracking my movements en masse from a respectful distance, even when I was constrained to visit the encampment's foul and reeking latrine.
All that first afternoon this went on, while I wandered aimlessly about the camp, seeing and hearing nothing, only seeking to marshal my psychic resources to see this tale through to its final end. Vraiment, in pragmatic terms, there was nothing to prevent me from turning on my heel, fleeing from this unwholesome and sorrowful venue, leaving Alpa, and taking up my new life as a student of the tale-teller's art with never a backward glance. The natural man who had been, my Pater Pan had said his good-bye and vanished into that final Void from which there is no rescue, and there was nothing I could accomplish by remaining here save bear witness to the final passage of what remained in that Tent of Many Colors into the Up and Out.
But of course in the end this proved quite sufficient to require the teller of tales to endure this story to the bitter end, for I knew all too well that if I abandoned it now my spirit would never know a moment's peace. For while the Child of Fortune that I had been had achieved the sad wisdom to let the spirit of the lover of her Golden Summer go to follow the unknown final path he had chosen, the woman I sought to become, she who had sworn the lodge-oath of the tale-teller, must be true to the first allegiance of the craft, and could not truly begin another tale until this one was completed in a manner that could satisfy the heart.
For was this not my wanderjahr's name tale, and if I ended it now with no spiritually satisfying conclusion, who was I to become, what fitting freenom could I choose, in homage to whom or what could I draw an esthetic moral therefrom? No, if I was to become anyone, it must be the teller who now approaches the end of this tale, and who therefore in that very moment of inevitable decision became the woman who transcribes these words now.
And so, by the time Alpa's sun had begun its slide down the sky, I had resolved to remain in this encampment for as long as the corpus of Pater Pan lived, and if the mages spoke true, if the genes themselves, or the collective unconscious of the species, or vraiment the Atman itself, as the Charge Addicts had it, found voice in the terminus of that brain's amplified passage, then this echo, or urgeist, or mere random discharge pattern, would I hector in search of that peace of the spirit which no mere human wisdom could grant me now.
Having so resolved, I allowed one of the boldest of the Children of Fortune to approach me, a handsome golden-haired and bronze-skinned boy at least two years younger than I, who eyed me with the collective worshipfulness to be sure, but whose eyes were enlivened by a certain speculation that led me to believe that the same had not entirely overridden the more wholesome and individualistic regard of his nascent natural man.
"Since I would seem to have been nominated as pontifex entirely against my will," I told him, "I may as well avail myself of the minimal prerogatives thereof. To wit, a tent where I may enjoy at least enough privacy to sleep without the presence of an audience, and a meal to consume therein."
"Pas problem, o Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt," the boy said. "My tent and my bed are yours."
"Indeed?" I said dryly, both outraged and charmed by his frank and callow boldness.
He seemed to writhe in embarrassment, though there seemed to be something thespically feigned about it. "I will of course seek other temporary lodgings," he said quickly. "If that is what you prefer. I am called Kim, you may rely on me, noble maestra, I will be happy to cater to your every need." Now his feigned embarrassment seemed to be replaced by the genuine article, through which he nevertheless spoke with a certain charmingly boyish manliness. "Even those needs which you may not feel now."
Indifferent to the thrall in which I seemed to hold this boy save for the practical means to which I could put it, but preferring the relative spunk of his company to the cloying worshipfulness of his unwholesome fellows, I allowed Kim to enter my service, which is to say I was grateful to let him lend me his plain little tent, see to my food and drink, and contrive to keep the others well away from his prize.
I ate a wretched meal of heavily fried fruits de mer and vegetables washed down with a large quantity of raw green wine, and, rendered empty of thought by the force of the day's events, drowsy by the wine, and torpid by the leaden and greasy repast, I soon enough lapsed into merciful unconsciousness on Kim's pneumatic pallet.
***