Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th Part 18

Knew that no matter what the odds were against his being right, there was nothing he could do.

Realized that as a judge in a matter such as this he was unqualified, that he was filled with bias, and could not change himself.

He'd been a doctor for too long to stop Operation Kelly.

_________________________.

By the author of the prize-winning KRISHNA FLUTING ... a tale of the Himalayas, of "the terrifying being who lives in the snows," of a priest who disappeared, and of an abbot prepared to go to extremes in defense of his own "truths."

THE ONE WHO RETURNS.

by John Berry

Father Ryan had disappeared completely and mysteriously about two months before my arrival at the hill station of Rampoche on April 25, 1952.

He had left the monastery in company with four other European priests and was hiking in the Himalayas somewhere near the Nepal frontier. A botanistof sorts, he had strayed a few steps away from his party, with the intention of identifying a certain tree. His companions never saw him again, although they searched for him all the rest of that day. Sherpas, Lepchas, Tibetans, Nepalese, and several companies of Indian soldiers combed the whole area for a week, in vain.

It surprised me, rather, that a mysterious disappearance should make much of an impression on Rampoche. The town was surrounded by deep gorges and forests where I once saw a python lower ten feet of itself out of a tree and pull up a yelling thing that looked like a large sloth.

And there were the Yetis, the half-legendary, hairy, man-like creatures who, I am now convinced, do really inhabit the upper slopes of the Himalayas. So far as I can recall, there is nothing funny about the Yeti except the English translation of the Tibetan word-which, if the truth be told, is not even Yeti-made by a charming man whose native tongue is not English. "The terrifying being who lives in the snows" thus becomes "the Abominable Snow Man"-a name that was quickly seized upon, not by true skeptics but by those who were determined not to believe; however, these were mere outsiders.

The people of the mountains know better. They evince a polite curiosity at the many photographs which have now been ama.s.sed, showing the huge footprints of the Yetis in the snow. These are common Yetis, though it is doubtful that the outsider will ever lay eyes on them, for they are masters of privacy. There are other Yetis who are far advanced in the ways of yoga.

And there is the Great Yeti, who is Illumined. His name must not be mentioned.

The story was told to me gradually, over a period of time, in several languages of men and of events; often imperceptibly: a word here or there, perhaps unnoticed at the time, dropped casually by some villager, shopkeeper, porter, or pa.s.sing lama. For it was only the outsider, like myself, who did not already know the truth.

One morning, not very early, but before the sun had hur-dled the Himalayas, I was out splitting wood beside my cabin on the mountainside above Rampoche. A Tibetan lama in purple rags and a tall, peaked cap came down the path. Standing before me and smiling, he began to jingle a little bell with one hand. With the other, he twirled a small drum on a handle, so that it was beaten by two dangling weights, one on each side.

Then he sang. I remember the song, per-fectly, from that one hearing, but having tried once to sing it, I know that the song is his alone-perhaps because he possesses nothing in this world.

When he had sung, he blessed me until I felt blessed.

We squatted on the ground, not quite looking at each other, not quite not looking at each other, not able to concentrate on nor to ignore the perpetual snows of Kinchinjunga, now suddenly kindled into flaming colors by the rising sun. My smile and his smile were the same. They did not belong to either of us. I experienced freedom and contentment, theinvisible commodities of this wandering men-dicant.

During a fit of madness brought on by dysentery, senti-mentality and the study of Sanskrit grammar, I had once insulted a Tibetan lama who came to me begging a bit too boisterously. I pushed him, I shouted curses at him, I threat-ened and nearly struck him with my bra.s.s opium pipe. And he laughed! Backing away in mock terror, the gigantic sim-pleton-the fool of G.o.d-thanked me for the experience. He walked away chortling, happier, if possible, than when he had first come.

Feelings of guilt now made me gauge my present lama's happiness by that of the former one. They seemed about the same, although I had given insults to the other one, and this Lama-ji was sharing my breakfast.

Evidently I could have no effect upon either.

Lama-ji stirred b.u.t.ter into his tea and drank it with re-spect, crinkling his eyes at me.

"The Flat Land must be a very interesting place," he ven-tured.

I mentioned oceans, deserts and peoples, and improve-ments in methods of transportation, communication and government. However, he came to the point: "Your Grand Lama is called a 'Pope,' is he not? Doubtless he is of a very high spiritual attainment?"

I told him that that was certainly the case, but that he had many troubles on account of the sin that is prevalent in the Flat Land.

Lama-ji murmured sympathetically. "It is true," he said. "Father Ryan showed me a picture of the Pope Lama, and also one of the Illumined Jesus as a young man."

We changed the subject several times and then were silent. In this silence, all at once, I remembered that Father Ryan was the priest who had disappeared.

"Father Ryan," I said.

"We met on a hill before dawn," Lama-ji said, and I felt, looking at him, that he might be speaking metaphorically.

I continued to look at him.

"It was seven days before he was taken," he added.

I said: "I am ignorant. Please tell me what happened to him."

Lama-ji looked at me with surprise, then he said softly: "The Great Yeti took him-Yeti Guru."I presumed that the Yeti had eaten Father Ryan.

Lama-ji laughed merrily.

"You are thinking of the big footprints in the snow," he said. "They are different. No, the Great Yeti is a spirit."

"Incarnated?"

"Yes, but he has no need to eat. Father Ryan is still alive."

"What is the Yeti like?"

"He is like a good and great yogi, but he is a Boddhisattva, much bigger than men. He lives in a cave, high, very high up in the snows."

"Why has he taken Father Ryan?"

Lama-ji became very serious. With an awed expression he said: "Sometimes the Great Yeti comes down from the snows to look at people.

Usually he returns alone. But if he finds a human with a pure soul, he will take that person with him. There in the cave Yeti Guru teaches the man and the man receives Illumination."

"But the man does not return to the world?"

"At the end of six months he appears again among human beings in order to teach them. He has one month to do this, and at the end of that time-if he lives that long-he dies quickly and turns to dust. In that month he must stay in dark places, for he casts no shadow, and human beings are afraid at the approach of the Illumined One-and indeed he does make a great deal of trouble for them."

"What kind of trouble?" I asked.

"Ah," said Lama-ji sadly. "Men are provoked by the truth-as in your country they were provoked by the Illumined Jesus before he became a Boddhisattva. Did they not burn him to ashes?"

"No," I said. "They crucified him."

"That is not fatal to One Who Returns," Lama-ji said. "Everyone knows that he must be burned to ashes, like a scroll. Otherwise he goes on teaching and disturbing people. You will see what happens when Father Ryan-Boddhisattva comes down from the snows."

Lama-ji's face was now serene, but with a suggestion of inward irony, a baffling combination of naivete and sophisti-cation.

"And whose side are you on?" I asked with some asperity.

Lama-ji quaked with suppressed laughter. "My son," he said, "there are no sides. All is ritual."At the end of June, I went down to the Gangetic Plains. It was not until the following April that I returned to Rampoche to escape the heat. This time I made the acquain-tance of Joan Venkataramanan, a handsome, learned and courageous Englishwoman who had married an Indian. Daily she a.s.saulted the Everest of her existence, and neither she nor it could ever admit defeat.

She and I and her two children were hiking along a mountain trail late one afternoon, when we stopped to sit on some boulders, to catch our breath.

Joan was not a com-pulsive talker, but she talked steadily to me on that day, for the simple reason that she had stored up so much that had to be told and could not be told-except to another inward sort of outsider. We sat there gazing out across immense depths and heights and distances of an indescribable grandeur. A black spot at the base of the mountain to our left loomed up curiously. I seemed to recall a white building- The children-a boy of seven and a girl of about ten-were scampering up the mountainside in back of us. Joan was talking about Freedom. It might be a good thing, she said, to be a nun for the sake of the esprit de corps-only she was afraid of finding herself stuck without much esprit and no corps at all.

"I once knew an Irish priest who was a free spirit," Joan said. "He lived in a monastery that used to be down there, where you see that black spot-it burned down last Octo-ber, with the Abbot inside, and possibly someone else. The others were Belgians and a couple of Poles. Father Ryan-"

I suppose I looked intense, for Joan at once concentrated on this subject in order to remove any pretext I might have for interfering with her oblique confession. And indeed I did not wish to intrude. She was creating a world out of words. It was like the falling of snow.

Under it lay Everest.

"The Abbot," Joan was saying, "was a formidable man. I went to see him about the children's education and we had a bit of a row. He was one of those granite-faced Walloons-a convert himself, I suspect. They always go to extremes to make up for their heretical past, you know."

Father Ryan, on the other hand, seemed to have been a good-hearted sort of fellow. He had given the children lessons in natural science until his superior, who may have feared Joan's possible influence on the teacher, forbade him to continue his friends.h.i.+p with them.

Then Father Ryan had disappeared on that hiking ex-pedition...

And the monastery?

"Last October," Joan said, "the Abbot did a terrible and heroic thing-I've been ashamed of myself ever since for having quarreled with him. Just after nightfall a fire broke out in the monastery. It must have been in the Abbot's cell, because he was the only one who was aware of it."He rang the big bell-we heard it for miles around, wild and defiant-and he ordered everyone out of the monastery. Then he locked the gates to keep anyone from coming back in. He stayed in there alone to fight the fire, and he died in there. It was foolish of him-with help he might have put out the fire-but he wouldn't risk the lives of the others. I can hardly understand such absolute courage, can you? Within an hour the place was in ashes.

"Of course, you know how people like to embroider simple events. Some of the monks claimed to have seen a shadowy figure at nightfall moving majestically out of the forest, into the monastery, and up to the Abbot's room, which was in a sort of tower. That was just before the fire started.

"Then there was that unstable Polish monk, a sort of menial. When the flames were at their height, he saw in them a vision of Christ-smiling ever so slightly, seated in the padmasana or lotus posture, His hands raised in the mudra of Divine Teaching."

The children were coming down the mountain toward us. I began to convey to Joan, by gestures, a certain restlessness that had taken hold of me. It was getting late, and after nightfall the trails in those precipitous mountains are not altogether safe, especially for the outsider whose gaze may be momentarily distracted by the sight of moonlight on snow over a considerable area and at some height.

___________________________.

By the author of THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO and THE OLD CHINA HANDS, a tale of one hundred men who marched into imprisonment in a long, green valley.

The imprisonment was not a usual one ... neither was its effect...

THE CAPTIVITY.

by Charles G. Finney

Yes, said Rops, I know it sounds like the Abyssinia of Ra.s.selas, but there it was, and it was real. One hundred of us were there; it dawned on us later that we had been selected. They held about six thousand of us as captives, you know. So they picked this Hundred, and all the rest were allowed to escape. It wasn't much they could escape to. Everything-nearly everything-was in ruins. But the escapees and the ones who were still alive in the cities and the villages they escaped to managed to rebuild, to survive. Probably that was the purpose in letting them escape.

Of course, why we Hundred were kept in captivity is something I'll never know. That was forty years ago, but things haven't changed a bit. We're all ready to go at it again-bang, bang, bang! The winners of the one forty years ago have become weakened, and the losers have become strong.

There seems to be some sort of law which governs these things, but I don't know what it is.But the winners that time had been plenty strong, strong enough, I suppose, to have imposed their will on the whole world. A sort of compromise ended the fighting, but there was no question about who the victors were. There does seem to be a question now about who will win this next one; all sides are prepared about equally; the only way to settle it is to fight it out.

This Hundred I was in was captured in the Far North Region; they flew us out the next day-after they had culled us over-to the place which was to be our prison camp for the next three years. You have seen the green-covered hills rising in Hawaii and the green-covered chasms in Mindanae. It was a place like that. There was a canyon all covered with green about ten miles long, flat at the bottom, and probably fifteen miles across from rim to rim. The sides of the canyon were benched and terraced.

The whole thing was fenced in, as is a wildlife section in a zoo; the animals seem to be living in their natural habitat, but everybody-even the animals-knows there's a fence around it and that there's no escape.

There were trails and pathways along the benches and terraces, and there were big roomy caves carved in the can-yon walls. The Hundred was broken up into Tens, and each of the Tens was given a cave to use as barracks.

Toilet facilities were provided in the caves, and each man had sleeping privacy for his hammock was screened off. They took away our Far North Region uniforms and gave us flower-print loin cloths to wear. They immunized us against all possibility of sickness. I never knew any of the Hundred to become ill during the three years we were there. There was never a death, either. The Hundred that marched in all marched out again three years later.

Never once did we see our actual captors. Their word was pa.s.sed down to us through an intermediate race, military men who acted as our jailers.

Perhaps attendants would be a better word than jailers. In no sense were we in a jail. We were in a little ten-mile-long world of our own, but it wasn't like a jail at all. We were nurtured, cared for, looked after as if we were the rarest of rare animals. And it was a beauti-ful world of river and hills and flowers and fruits and sunny greenery.

We played at sports much of the time, a game of b.a.l.l.s on a sanded court being the most favored contest. Twenty men could play at a time, one Ten against a rival Ten. We drew up a schedule and held a tournament; the Ten I was in became the world champions one year, but lost the next. We used to seine in the river, ten men manning the big nets they had given us. This was as much a sport as anything else. The prize for the seiners who netted the most fish was an extra little pipe of wine. We hunted, with knives made of flint, the deer and pigs that lived high up on the green benches, and this was the best sport of all. The meat thus secured, the white meat of fish, the pale meat of pig, and the red meat of deer, we turned over to the intermediates who attended us, and the meat was cooked for us and served to us.

The arts were encouraged. I myself took up painting, for I had always wanted to paint. They provided me with pigments, brushes, and lovely thin boards of hard white wood to paint on. When I asked for it, through theintermediates, they provided me with a book of instructions on how the proper shading was done to delineate the eyes and muscles and b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the nude figure.

Many of the men wished to pursue sculpturing and model-ing and ceramy.

They provided these men with the tools needed. Seven men from one of the Tens down the canyon erected a scaffolding against a bare rock wall and chiseled into the wall heroic-size statues of themselves standing there in different postures. They won the prize that year for art. One of my paintings was singled out for honorable mention. It was a nude I had done of Leaf. She had just caught a salamander, and in my painting she stands holding it with a look of fright on her face, and drops of water glisten on her skin. Oh, yes, they provided us with women. They con-sidered women as necessary to our well-being as food and exercise and wine and shelter.

We named the girls after the pretty things around us. Thus I called mine Leaf and another man in our Ten named his Twig and another named his Petal. They were girls from another race, captive, too, of course, with skins lighter than ours. I remember how de-lighted the Hundred was when it learned, on the third day of our captivity, that there would be girls. We had a long frolic the night the girls arrived. We built a great fire on the sand that bordered the river, and they provided us with extra wine. The girls were given their own caves. We could visit them whenever we chose, visit whichever one we chose, provided she gave us entry.

We mated, in fact, as birds mate-for the week, for the month, for the season. One of the men of a Ten near ours sired eleven children during his three years of captivity.

Like hippos in a zoo, you know: the keepers give them the best care possible, and are happy when they breed. Or like pigs, perhaps. You have seen the feeding arrangements on pork farms. There will be so many troughs for so many pigs, and the pigs quickly learn to gather at the troughs at the stated feeding times. Of course, we were not fed at troughs; we were given our food in black and brown stone-ware bowls. Each Ten had its own feeding place, garitas we called them after their similarity to sentry boxes. They were gate-like places, ten of them, in the fence at the mouth of our canyon. It was just a wire mesh fence, but it was very high; the lianas had crawled all over it, concealing its steel meshes and making it look like an impenetrable barricade of green. Five stated times a day we of the Tens would gather at our own garitas and be served. Here is a typical menu, though the menu changed daily, and remember that the servings were quite small: Breakfast: Fruit, cereal, egg, coffee.

First Lunch: One little sausage, roll, pickle.

Second Lunch: Soup (lentil or bean or pea], roll, tart, wine (red, one cup).

Dinner: Meat or fish or fowl, raw vegetable salad, wine (white, one cup).

Third Lunch (in the evening): Broth, three large olives, roll, beer (one large flagon).Our daily schedule, though it varied every day, was some-thing like this: Breakfast, then hunting in the hills or seining in the river.

First lunch, then group games where the Tens would vie against each other.

Second lunch, then a rest period which was usually de-voted to art (sculpturing, painting, wood carving, etc.).

Dinner, eaten together with the girls.

Third lunch, very late in the evening. We would be tired then and the girls would drift away up the canyon to their own caves.

Now, none of this was hard and fast. We could follow the daily schedule or disregard it. We could eat at the stated times, or we could miss the meals.