Part 2 (1/2)
”We saw you at Xingu. You're the Jamarik.u.ma. What are you doing here?”
”I'm here to help,” said Maria.
”Help us do what?” said the old woman.
”You don't have to stay in this place,” said Maria. ”If you do, you and your children and your grandchildren's children won't ever be allowed to leave.”
The old woman-and half a dozen other older members of the tribe-glanced at the Cure. Not in a particularly friendly way.
”What's this all about?” said the old woman to the Cure, still in Portuguese. ”You've got a spirit arguing for you now?”He replied in their own language. To Maria he sounded sulky.
”Do you understand why you're here?” said Maria. ”These people . . .” She gestured at the looming buildings. ”They want your blood, your . . .”Genes might meansouls to them. ”You have a-a talent to cure diseases,” said Maria. ”That's why they want your blood.”
Guarded eyes stared back from around the fire.
The old woman nodded. ”What's so bad about that?”
”You won't ever be able to go back home,” said Maria.
The old woman snorted. ”At home they were trying to shoot us.” She spat into the fire. ”We're afraid to go back there.”
”Buthere we're animals.” The Cure pushed himself to his feet. ”We'reprisoners! ”
”We've had this discussion,” said the old woman sharply and turned to Maria. ”We made a decision months ago. We said he didn't have to stay if he didn't want to, but he stayed anyway, and now he's bringing in spirits to make an argument that no one else agrees with. We're safer right here than we've been for years. No one's shooting at us. So we have to wear their ugly jewelry.” She touched the ruby sampler in her ear. ”So we lose a little blood now and then. It's just a scratch.”
”But you're in a cage,” said Maria.
”I don't like that part,” said the old woman. ”But you have to admit, it's a big cage, and mostly it keeps the bandits and murderers out.”
The Cure jabbed a finger at Maria, making his point in harsh staccato tones. Maria only caught the word Xingu .
The old woman eyed Maria. ”What would happen to us at Xingu?”
”We'd teach you how to be part of the world outside,” said Maria. ”We'd show you what you need to know to be farmers, or to live in the city if that's what you want.”
”Are there guns in the world outside?”
It was a patronizing question. Maria felt sweat break out at the small of her back. ”You know there are.”
”Would we all be able to stay together, the entire tribe?” asked the old woman.
”We do the best we can,” said Maria. ”Sometimes it isn't possible to keep everyone together, but we try.”
The old woman made a wide gesture into the dark. ”We didn't lose one single person on the trip. You're saying you can't guarantee that for us at Xingu, though. Is that right?”
”Right,” said Maria.
”But we'd be free.”
Maria didn't say anything.
The old woman made a sharp gesture. ”It's time for the Jamarik.u.ma spirit to leave. If that's what sheactually is.” She closed her eyes and began to hum, a spirit-dismissing song, Maria supposed, and she glanced at the Cure, who leaped to his feet.
”I am leaving. With the Jamarik.u.ma.”
The old woman nodded, still humming, as though she was glad he'd finally made up his mind.
The Cure took a step away from the fire. He walked-no, he sauntered around his silent friends, family, maybe even his wife. No one said anything and no one was shedding any tears. He came over to Maria and stood beside her.
”I will not come back,” he said.
The old woman hummed a little louder, like she was covering his noise with hers.
When they got back to the Toyota, Maria unlocked the pa.s.senger side and let him in. He shut the door and she walked slowly around the back to give herself time to breathe. Her heart was pounding and her head felt empty and light, like she was dreaming. She leaned against the driver's side, just close enough to see his dim reflection in the side mirror. He was rubbing his sweaty face, hard, as though he could peel away his skin.
In that moment, she felt as though she could reach into the night, to just the right place and find an invisible door which would open into the next day. It was the results of a night with him that she wanted, she realized. He was like a prize she'd just won. For the first time, she wondered what his name was.
She pulled the driver's side open and got in beside him. She turned the key in the ignition and checked the rearview mirror as the dashboard lit up. All she could see of herself was a ghostly, indistinct shape.
”Is something wrong?” he asked.
”Everything's fine.” She said and let the truck blunder forward into the insect-laden night.
Later, when the access road evened out to pavement, he put his hot palm on her thigh. She kept driving, watching how the headlights cut only so far ahead into the darkness. She stopped just before the main road, and without looking at him, reached out to touch his fingers.
”Are we going to Xingu?” he asked, like a child.
”No,” she said. ”I can't go back.”
”Neither can I,” he said, and let her kiss him. Here. And there.
JACK WILLIAMSON.
Jack Williamson is a marvel. There is simply no other word for him. The man has been delighting readers practically as long as science fiction has existed. When I first met Jack at a banquet in Lawrence, Kansas, I asked him about his earliest publication. He said, ”Well, I published my first story in 1928.You were just a little girl.” After I ran to the ladies' room to check in the mirror whether I'd really turned into my mother, I forgave him. I think Jack's sweetness and charm could get him forgiven anything.
Born in 1908, Jack lived in Mexico and West Texas before the family moved by covered wagon to a semidesert homestead in eastern New Mexico. He grew up there, escaping into his imagination via Jules Verne and other early SF. After three years of college, he dropped out to write science fiction, selling enough to keep himself alive until World War II. Back from service as a weather forecaster in the South Pacific, he wroteThe Humanoids , worked as a newspaper editor, created the comic stripBeyond Mars for theNew York Sunday News , earned a Ph.D. in English literature, and then taught at Eastern New Mexico University. Just your average normal life.
Jack still teaches one course a year while continuing to add to his oeuvre of fifty-odd novels. ”The Ultimate Earth” is a section of his novel-in-progress,Terraforming Earth . The novella has earned him his first Nebula, which he says ”was well worth the wait.” ”The Ultimate Earth” is so packed with ideas that it's difficult to imagine what will be left for the rest of the novel. But I have faith that Jack will find something.
THE ULTIMATE EARTH.
Jack Williamson