“I’m afraid this froze won’t let go of me.”
“The point is, why should the effect stop at the Earth’s surface? If time slows in the absence of mass, then it should speed up in its greater presence. Did you notice that the coast is a cliff of several hundred meters? How does one get to a boat? By elevator.”
“I was never on the coast.”
“Neither was I. But I read about it in a book.”
“You’re right,” Ra Mahleiné chimed in. “The elevator drops through a tunnel in the rock. It goes fast, and it goes for a long time. You have to be careful not to put out your hand, because the railing is not high, and fifty, sixty people are packed inside. For the elevator back up, I had to wait a month. That was in addition to the quarantine.”
“You see, Gavein?”
“Miners far below the surface must get a lot accomplished,” Gavein said. It was not a brilliant observation.
“Not necessarily. The deeper you descend into the Earth, the weaker the gravity. Calculate the gravitation of a spherical body, and you’ll see. At sufficient depth, there’s a play between the dependence of time on distance and the fall in the mass contributing to the gravitational force, and no one knows which of these wins out. So far in mines, even in the lowest, no appreciable change has been observed.”
“In that case, why should the effect at the surface of the sea be stronger than it is beneath the ground at the same altitude?” Gavein asked, unconvinced.
“Use integral calculus. Ever gnawed on that nut? The y-axis does funny things near the coast.” Zef wasn’t making too much sense, and his forehead was beaded with sweat, as Haifan’s face had been before.
“Why don’t we write this Mill a letter, with the question?” Gavein suggested, as if holding out a life preserver.
“Mill happens to be in our college. I’ll talk with him as soon as he returns. He’s out on some geodesic study.”
Their conversation was ended by the appearance of Beanpole, who stood in the doorway, as pock-faced as ever and glummer than usual, chewing gum.
“Let’s go, Mohawk,” he said, shifting his weight nervously. “And don’t forget your umbrella. Today it’s their turn.”
30
Zef returned from the movies with a foul smell and a scowl—they had tricked his side, urinating into balloons and dropping them from the balcony. He threw his splendid jacket in the washing machine. Edda grew impatient: besides the landlords, only the Throzzes were waiting in the dining room.
Finally Haifan showed. He set a hammer and a pillow on the table in front of him. Not waiting any longer, Edda brought in the pasta.
“We can eat,” Haifan said. “The others won’t be coming.”
He spoke calmly, but everyone looked at him.
“I’m done with the hammer now. It’s still wet, because I had it under the faucet. But the pillowcase needs to be laundered. Saliva got all over it, though the saliva dried. I hope the feathers inside didn’t get wet.”
“Haifan, why aren’t the others coming?” asked Gavein. Ra Mahleiné’s fork was tapping her plate rhythmically. Gavein gently stopped her hand, its trembling. “My nervous darling. Haifan is joking.”
“It’s not a joke. They’re not coming. Eat your dinner.”
“I better check on the Hannings, to see what the problem is,” said Gavein.
“Why go there now?” Haifan shook his head. “You won’t eat afterward. I finally solved the problem. They were suffering from bad incarnations, and now they’ll come back in new, better ones. No point in worrying over what they were before.”
“Are they dead, Haifan?” Gavein asked. A delicate question, but he sensed that Haifan would not be violent.
“Death doesn’t exist. They live on in the endless cycle of rebirth. Their bodies will turn into other organisms. Part of the biomass now, though they were always part of it, weren’t they? It had to be done, to help them. They could accomplish nothing good in their current forms. They insulted Magda, Fatima, and other whites. The Black Spirit and the Red Spirit ordered me to do it. They told me that the Hannings had depleted their energy, so they needed to return in another incarnation, perhaps as blacks. The White Spirit was insulted. I had to plead with it not to rule over Davabel.”
The belief that a person passed through four incarnations had come from the fact that most people were unable to experience all four Lands, their lives being too short. But if you were born four times, each time in a different Land, you would know good and evil in equal, and therefore just proportions. It was unclear how much was recalled of previous lives or in what order a person was born into the different Lands. It was generally thought that the highest stations in life were occupied by those in their third or fourth incarnation, that is, those who had accumulated the most experience and wisdom. After the fourth incarnation you dissolved back into nothingness, preserving the symmetry of the world, for it was from nothingness that you came.
In addition, the Davabel order of incarnations said that the number of your life was knowable. The category in a citizen’s identification papers always increased upon his arrival in a new Land; when he achieved a three, however, the number would be erased in the next. The more the erasure of category was postponed, therefore, the higher the person. (Not everyone reached a ripe old age, so those who were higher had a greater chance of avoiding erasure.)
Gavein had never given thought to how many times he himself or Ra Mahleiné had been incarnated.
“There is no White Spirit or Red Spirit, Haifan,” he said.
“You are mistaken, Dave. There are many spirits. Every street, every avenue, every phenomenon has its spirit. That is why things can happen. It is the spirits who make cars go, turn on the television, lift the sun from the horizon. Who else could manage these things? The spirits confide in me. They tell me of their work, of their cares, and that certain people make their work difficult. They come to me every night. In Davabel, the White Spirit is indignant. It told me that it may rule in Davabel to teach the blacks a lesson. Why shoot your mouth off at those who are better than you? All you need to do is look at the passports to see whose incarnation is higher and whose is lower. It’s misfortune enough that an individual is born white—why humiliate him even more?”
Ra Mahleiné, usually composed, was horror-struck. Her hands were clammy.
“Do I look paranoid, Dave?” Haifan asked, addressing Gavein only, perhaps because Gavein had spoken first.
“You don’t. Your eyes aren’t wild. You speak coherently, in whole sentences.” Which was the truth.
“Then eat, eat… I don’t want dinner to be as unpleasant as it was yesterday.”
“Haifan, tell us what happened. We’re a little frightened,” said Gavein.
No one else spoke.
“Fine, but eat. Then I must call the police, because the law, though it makes no sense, should be respected. A person needs to believe in something. That’s why we have the law. Don’t you think, Dave?”
“I too respect the law, though sometimes respecting it takes effort.”
“Exactly. You put that well.” He nodded. “I’ll tell you everything, but eat. I want to share it with you, explain my mission.”
The people at the table raised no objection, though the spaghetti was cold and stiff in their mouths.
“It was after three, when it’s darkest. I lay in bed and looked at the ceiling. I hadn’t been able to sleep for several nights. In the next room slept that abomination, the fratricide.”
“Him too?” gasped Edda.
“Yes. And serves him right if he comes back as a white. For burning Aladar.” He cleared his throat and continued. “And the White Spirit entered. It always comes from the closet. It was bright, had blue eyes and yellow hair, and it said: ‘Why did the Hannings do this thing to me? It is bad in Davabel, and now I must step in.’ I felt that I couldn’t sit by and watch either. Then the Red Spirit came out from behind the curtains. It had flaming hair and eyes that glowed green, and it said: ‘Go thou and do it.’ I asked it what exactly I should do, and it said: ‘The Black Spirit will tell you.’ The Black Spirit joined them and said: ‘You must silence them, so they do not anger the other spirits. Else they will take Davabel from me, and the blacks will have a zero instead of a three on their passports. Therefore take Edda’s hammer, the hammer you use to hang pictures, and take a pillow also.’ The spirits of the hammer and the pillow came to me and gave me the details. I went to the Hannings. The door was open. Ian must have had a premonition that his hour was up, because he wasn’t trying to hide. He slept on his side and had his vile mouth open. His wife slept on her back, snoring like a pig. A breast hung out of her nightgown, pale and long. I thought that she might toss and wake her husband, so I started with him.”