path: root/71580-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 71580 ***





                         The Courts of Jamshyd

                          By ROBERT F. YOUNG

                      _Once, Ryan knew, dogs had
                    run with man, not from him...._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Infinity September 1957.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


    _They say the Lion and the
      Lizard keep
    The Courts where Jamshyd
      gloried and drank deep_--

    --_The Rubáiyát_


The dust-reddened sun was low in the west when the tribe filed down
from the fissured foothills to the sea. The women spread out along the
beach to gather driftwood, while the men took over the task of setting
up the rain-catch.

Ryan could tell from the haggard faces around him that there would
be a dance that night. He knew his own face must be haggard too,
haggard and grimed with dust, the cheeks caved in, the eyes dark with
hunger-shadows. The dogless days had been many this time.

The rain-catch was a crazy quiltwork pattern of dogskins laboriously
sewn together into a makeshift tarpaulin. Ryan and the other young men
held it aloft while the older men set up the poles and tied the dog-gut
strings, letting the tarp sag in the middle so that when it rained the
precious water would accumulate in the depression. When the job was
done, the men went down to the beach and stood around the big fire the
women had built.

Ryan's legs ached from the long trek through the hill country and his
shoulders were sore from packing the dogskin tarp over the last five
miles. Sometimes he wished he was the oldest man in the tribe instead
of the youngest: then he would be free from the heavy work, free to
shamble along in the rear on marches; free to sit on his haunches
during stopovers while the younger men took care of the hunting and the
love-making.

He stood with his back to the fire, letting the heat penetrate his
dogskin clothing and warm his flesh. Nearby, the women were preparing
the evening meal, mashing the day's harvest of tubers into a thick
pulp, adding water sparingly from their dogskin waterbags. Ryan
glimpsed Merium out of the corner of his eye, but the sight of her
thin young face and shapely body did not stir his blood at all, and he
turned his eyes miserably away.

He remembered how he had felt about her at the time of the last dog
kill--how he had lain beside her before the roaring fire, the aroma
of roasted dog flesh still lingering in the night air. His belly had
been full and he had lain beside her half the night, and he had almost
wanted her. She had seemed beautiful then, and for many days afterward;
but gradually her beauty had faded away and she had become just another
drab face, another listless figure stumbling along with the rest of the
tribe, from oasis to oasis, from ruin to ruin, in the eternal search
for food.

Ryan shook his head. He could not understand it. But there were so
many things that he could not understand. The Dance, for instance. Why
should the mouthing of mere words to the accompaniment of rhythmic
movements give him pleasure? How could hatred make him strong?

He shook his head again. In a way, the Dance was the biggest mystery of
all....

       *       *       *       *       *

Merium brought him his supper, looking up at him shyly with her large
brown eyes. Illogically, Ryan was reminded of the last dog he had
killed and he jerked the earthen pot out of her hands and walked down
to the water's edge to eat alone.

The sun had set. Streaks of gold and crimson quivered in the
wind-creased water, slowly faded away. Darkness crept down from the
gullied foothills to the beach, and with it came the first cold breath
of night.

Ryan shivered. He tried to concentrate on his food, but the memory of
the dog would not go away.

It had been a small dog, but a very vicious one. It had bared its teeth
when at last he had cornered it in the little rocky cul-de-sac in the
mountains, and as further evidence of its viciousness, it had wagged
its ridiculous tail. Ryan could still remember the high-pitched sound
of its growl--or was it a whine?--when he advanced on it with his club;
but most of all he remembered the way its eyes had been when he brought
the club down on its head.

He tried to free himself from the memory, tried to enjoy his tasteless
meal. But he went right on remembering. He remembered all the other
dogs he had killed and he wondered why killing them should bother him
so. Once, he knew, dogs had run with the hunters, not from them; but
that was long before his time--when there had been something else
besides dogs to hunt.

Now it was different. Now it was dogs--or death....

He finished his meatless stew, swallowing the last mouthful grimly. He
heard a soft step behind him, but he did not turn around. Presently
Merium sat down beside him.

The sea glinted palely in the light of the first stars.

"It's beautiful tonight," Merium said.

Ryan was silent.

"Will there be a dance?" she asked.

"Maybe."

"I hope there is."

"Why?"

"I--I don't know. Because everyone's so different afterwards, I
suppose--so happy, almost."

Ryan looked at her. Starlight lay gently on her child-like face, hiding
the thinness of her cheeks, softening the hunger-shadows beneath her
eyes. Again he remembered the night he had almost wanted her and he
wanted it to be the same again, only all the way this time. He wanted
to want to take her in his arms and kiss her lips and hold her tightly
to him, and when desire refused to rise in him, shame took its place,
and because he couldn't understand the shame, he supplanted it with
anger.

"Men have no happiness!" he said savagely.

"They did once--a long time ago."

"You listen too much to the old women's tales."

"I like to listen to them. I like to hear of the time when the ruins
were living cities and the earth was green--when there was an abundance
of food and water for everyone.... Surely you believe there was such a
time. The words of the Dance--"

"I don't know," Ryan said. "Sometimes I think the words of the Dance
are lies."

Merium shook her head. "No. The words of the Dance are wisdom. Without
them we could not live."

"You talk like an old woman yourself!" Ryan said. Abruptly he stood up.
"You _are_ an old woman. An ugly old woman!" He strode across the sand
to the fire, leaving her alone by the water.

The tribe had broken up into groups. The old men huddled together in
one group, the younger men in another. The women sat by themselves near
the wavering perimeter of the firelight, crooning an ancient melody,
exchanging an occasional word in low tones.

Ryan stood by the fire alone. He was the youngest male of the tribe.
He and Merium had been the last children to be born. The tribe had
numbered in the hundreds then, and the hunting had been good, the dogs
still tame and easy to find. There had been other tribes too, wandering
over the dust-veiled land. Ryan wondered what had become of them. But
he only pretended to wonder. In his heart, he knew.

It was growing colder. He added more driftwood to the fire and watched
the flames gorge themselves. Flames were like men, he thought. They ate
everything there was in sight, and when there was nothing more to eat,
they died.

       *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly a drum throbbed out and a woman's voice chanted: "What is a
tree?"

A voice answered from the group of old men: "A tree is a green dream."

"What has become of the living land?"

"The living land is dust!"

The drum beat grew louder. Ryan's throat tightened. He felt the
refreshing warmth of anger touch his face. The opening phase of the
Dance always affected him, even when he was expecting it.

One of the old men was moving out into the firelight, shuffling his
feet to the beat of the drum. The light reddened the wrinkles on his
thirty-year-old face, made a crimson washboard of his forehead. His
thin voice drifted on the cold night air:

    "_The living land is dust, and those
    who turned it into dust
    are dust themselves_--"

A woman's voice took up the chant:

    "_Our ancestors are dust:
    dust are our gorged ancestors_--"

There were other figures shuffling in the firelight now, and the
beat on the dogskin drum head was sharper, stronger. Ryan felt the
quickening of his blood, the surge of new-born energy.

Voices blended:

    "_Dust are our gorged ancestors,
    our ancestors who raped the
      fields and ravished the hills,
    who cut the forest chains and
      set the rivers free;
    our ancestors who drank deep
      from the well of the world
    and left the well dry_--"

Ryan could contain himself no longer. He felt his own feet moving with
the vindictive beat of the drum. He heard his own voice take up the
chant:

    "_Let us take the memory of our ancestors
    and tear it open, rend its vitals,
    throw its entrails on the fire:
    our ancestors, the eaters,
    the putrefiers of the lakes and the rivers;
    the consumers, the destroyers, the murderers of the living land;
    the selfish, the obese, the great collectors,
    who tried to devour the world_--"

He joined the stomping mass of the tribe, his hands going through the
mimic motions of killing, rending, throwing. Strength flowed into his
emaciated limbs, pulsed through his undernourished body. He glimpsed
Merium across the fire and he caught his breath at the beauty of her
animated face. Again he almost wanted her, and for a while he was able
to convince himself that some day he _would_ want her; that this time
the effect of the Dance would not wear off the way it always had
before and he would go on feeling strong and confident and unafraid and
find many dogs to feed the tribe; then, perhaps, the men would want the
women the way they used to, and he would want Merium, and the tribe
would increase and become great and strong--

He raised his voice higher and stomped his feet as hard as he could.
The hatred was like wine now, gushing hotly through his body, throbbing
wildly in his brain. The chant crescendoed into a huge hysterical wail,
a bitter accusation reverberating over the barren hills and the dead
sea, riding the dust-laden wind--

    "_Our ancestors were pigs!
    Our ancestors were pigs!..._"


*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 71580 ***