[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
No, leaning over him. He was on a low bed, and they knelt beside him.
"Am I ill?" he asked.
"I hope not," said Deet. "We found you on the floor. You're exhausted, Leyel. I've been
telling you-- you have to eat, you have to get a normal amount of sleep. You're not young
enough to keep up this work schedule."
"I've barely started."
Zay laughed lightly. "Listen to him, Deet. I told you he was so caught up in this that he didn't
even know what day it was."
"You've been doing this for three weeks, Leyel. For the last week you haven't even come
home. I bring you food, and you won't eat. People talk to you, and you forget that you're in a
conversation, you just drift off into some sort of-- trance. Leyel, I wish I'd never brought you
here, I wish I'd never suggested indexing-"
"No!" Leyel cried. He struggled to sit up.
At first Deet tried to push him back down, insisting he should rest. It was Zay who helped
him sit. "Let the man talk," she said. "Just because you're his wife doesn't mean you can
stop him from talking."
"The index is wonderful," said Leyel. "Like a tunnel opened up into my own mind. I keep
seeing light just that far out of reach, and then I wake up and it's just me alone on a pinnacle
except for the pages up on the lector. I keep losing it--"
"No, Leyel, we keep losing you. The index is poisoning you, it's taking over your mind--"
"Don't be absurd, Deet. You're the one who suggested this, and you're right. The index
keeps surprising me, making me think in new ways. There are some answers already."
"Answers?" asked Zay.
"I don't know how well I can explain it. What makes us human. It has to do with communities
and stories and tools and-- it has to do with you and me, Deet."
"I should hope we're human," she said. Teasing him, but also urging him on.
"We lived together all those years, and we formed a community-- with our children, till they
left, and then just us. But we were like animals."
"Only sometimes," she said.
"I mean like herding animals, or primate tribes, or any community that's bound together only
by the rituals and patterns of the present moment. We had our customs, our habits. Our
private language of words and gestures, our dances, all the things that flocks of geese and
hives of bees can do."
"Very primitive."
"Yes, that's right, don't you see? That's a community that dies with each generation. When
we, die, Deet, it will all be gone with us. Other people will marry, but none of them will know
our dances and songs and language and--"
"Our children will."
"No, that's my point. They knew us, they even think they know us, but they were never part of
the community of our marriage. Nobody is. Nobody can be. That's why, when I thought you
were leaving me for this--"
"When did you think that I--"
"Hush, Deet," said Zay. "Let the man babble."
"When I thought you were leaving me, I felt like I was dead, like I was losing everything,
because if you weren't part of our marriage, then there was nothing left. You see?"
"I don't see what that has to do with human origins, Leyel. I only know that I would never
leave you, and I can't believe that you could think--"
"Don't distract him, Deet."
"It's the children. All the children. They play Wrinkly Grandma Posey, and then they grow up
and don't play anymore, so the actual community of these particular five or six children
doesn't exist any more-- but other kids are still doing the dance. Chanting the poem. For ten
thousand years!"
"This makes us human? Nursery rhymes?"
"They're all part of the same community! Across all the empty space between the stars,
there are still connections, they're still somehow the same kids. Ten thousand years, ten
thousand worlds, quintillions of children, and they all knew the poem, they all did the dance.
Story and ritual-- it doesn't die with the tribe, it doesn't stop at the border. Children who
never met face-to-face, who lived so far apart that the light from one star still hasn't reached
the other, they belonged to the same community. We're human because we conquered time
and space. We conquered the barrier of perpetual ignorance between one person and
another. We found a way to slip my memories into your head, and yours into mine."
"But these are the ideas you already rejected, Leyel. Language and community and--"
"No! No, not just language, not just tribes of chimpanzees chattering at each other. Stories,
epic tales that define a community, mythic tales that teach us how the world works, we use
them to create each other. We became a different species, we became human, because
we found a way to extend gestation beyond the womb, a way to give each child ten thousand
parents that he'll never meet face-to-face."
Then, at last, Leyel fell silerit, trapped by the inadequacy of his words. They couldn't tell
what he had seen in his mind. ff they didn't already understand, they never would.
"Yes," said Zay. "I think indexing your paper was a very good idea."
Leyel sighed and lay back down on the bed. "I shouldn't have tried."
"On the contrary, you've succeeded," said Zay.
Deet shook her head. Leyel knew why-- Deet was trying to signal Zay that she shouldn't
attempt to soothe Leyel with false praise.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plcs-sysunia.htw.pl
|
