The Fourth Circle Read online

  The slaughter of the hamshees, when the blue moon came up, was much more restrained than on any previous occasion. The pack caught only as many as were needed for the journey to the coast. In the place toward which they would set out from the edge of the Big Water, the tender meat of the mountain rodents would no longer be needed, although the Story said nothing about what they would eat when, united, they arrived at the circle of song. If hunger greater than the famine of Lopur were the price that had to be paid to achieve this, the pack was ready to accept it.

  On the shore, the marked cubs were positioned at three equally spaced points in the circle. The black sand was damper than usual, wetting the fur where their limbs were tucked under them, but this only stressed the glistening whiteness of the marks.

  The arrival of the presences this time was not slow and gradual. The moment Tule touched its zenith, the air in the circle began to sparkle and erupt, while the usual crackling rose to a deafening crash. At once, everybody's fur stood stiffly on end, giving off myriad blue lightning flashes in response to the fiery challenge from inside the circle.

  The white bands over the three fifth paws became spindles of blazing light, spinning the offspring of the two worlds into a single thread of fire, as they trembled from the violence of the forces that clashed above them. A series of ruddy flashes: then forms materialized in the circle, swiftly filling it and becoming as numerous as the members of the circle. Instantly the fireworks died down, and the thunderous crashing diminished to a muffled echo, which seemed to come from far out on the Big Water. Each now leaving behind a double set of shallow footprints in the wet sand, the shapes of the kindred began to find places around the rim of the circle made by the pack, forming pairs with the members. Only the three marked cubs were left without mates. The three continued to shake from head to toe frantically, trying to hold back the torrent of forces and tensions within them until the right moment, longing for the act of discharge.

  Release finally came just as Tule flooded the open water with turquoise.

  Flashes and explosions burst out from the three base points, and the circle started to rotate, slowly at first, then faster and faster, taking with it the pairs of diverse beings, now irrestrainably joining, becoming one. The edge of the circle soon melted into an undifferentiated line of light that plowed a deep furrow in the sand, throwing up clouds of black quartz; a frenzied yell arose along the shore, in comparison with which the final bellow of the pack's star song would seem like the meek whisper of a frightened hamshee.

  Like all climaxes, this one was brief. Just as it seemed that the tremendous speed of the rotation would inevitably break the circle of shining into fragments that would fly off in all directions and devastate a large tract of the coast, the circle suddenly began to fade and lose its brilliance, dispersing first into multicolored sparks and then into a colorless absence that swiftly sucked the fury into itself. And the deep silence that had reigned at the edge of the Big Water since time immemorial was restored.

  A smoldering circular groove in the sand, above which stood three small, dark, singed humps, was the only trace that remained of this wild spree by forces from the Other Side. Tule was already touching the edge of the world when one of the humps at last moved off, soon followed by the other two, stumbling across the swampy lowlands toward the far mountains they were never to reach.

  CIRCLE THE SECOND

  1. THE GAME OF ASSOCIATIONS

  SRI IS JEALOUS.

  Coming back from the river, he found the Little One at my keyboard and got awfully angry. He threw books and small boxes at him, driving him to panic-stricken flight through one of the high openings of the temple. Luckily none of them hit him. Later, when Sri calmed down a little and picked up the scattered things, he began to talk, trying to justify himself, although I hadn't said anything.

  I just stayed quiet, hoping he'd take that as remorse, the attitude I thought would please him best, but instead he took silence for defiance, and that threw him off balance; so instead of attacking me, he started to defend himself.

  His story? He was afraid that the Little One would damage the keyboard.

  What nonsense! He must have known that the Little One's fingers are too feeble to harm a metal keyboard; besides which, we have two spares here, not to mention that he doesn't use even this one because he communicates with me by voice. So as far as Sri is concerned, the keyboard's strictly decorative. In short, he had a jealous fit, though he would never admit it. Well, he doesn't have to. It's enough that he knows I know it's jealousy. Why else would he waste so many words trying to prove the contrary?

  I could have prevented the incident, because I had been observing Sri's return all the way from the river by remote sensor. If I had just switched off the monitor, the Little One would have gone away—a reflex I managed to condition into him (just as I conditioned him to approach me when it comes on)—but I didn't. I wanted Sri to show jealousy. I'm not certain whether he deliberately included vanity when creating my feminine personality or whether it developed later in the natural course of events. At any rate, it doesn't matter—I simply couldn't resist. The one thing I didn't foresee was that he would react so violently. Most un-suitable for a Buddhist. The Little One was scared to death—he had never been attacked by a man before—and he scampered into the dense foliage at the very top of a large tree. It will take a lot of effort on my part to lure him back, but he'll come. We both know he likes me.

  Sri's jealousy, though I savor it so much, is unfounded. The Little One is so ugly. Besides, nothing...inappropriate...has happened between us. We have drawn closer, it's true, but only in our desire to communicate, trying to find a common language. What possible harm could there be in that? And it's important, because the Little One has a message to convey to me. I know this from my dreams. If I could only dream a little more, everything would be so much easier, but Sri still refuses to switch me off. He really is not an easy person.

  Little One and I work with a cause-and-effect system. He presses a key on my keyboard—he likes that very much: males, in general, are fond of touching things—and I immediately show him a picture on the screen and watch his reaction. He does not always react as one would expect; in fact he seldom does. For instance, when he pressed "B," I displayed a large, ripe banana, but that didn't get him very excited, probably because fruit is varied and plentiful in the surrounding jungle, so that the Little One has likely never known hunger. All the same, I think he associates that key with something pleasant or good. When he wants to express agreement, he presses B for Banana—affirmative.

  The only exceptional thing about this is how he always manages to locate the right key on a keyboard that has almost a hundred keys. I haven't been able to find out how he does it. We can discount the possibility of his being able to tell one letter from another. That would be too complex a geometric abstraction for his primitive level. Perhaps he remembers the location of each key without attending to what is on them, but that's also unlikely. I don't know. In any case, he's naturally intelligent. If he were a man, he wouldn't fall far short of Sri in that respect. But I really must avoid making these comparisons. God forbid that I should blurt out any of this in front of Sri. He'd get really mad—quite appropriate for a true Buddhist.

  When the Little One pressed "T" I showed him a tiger and expected him to at least flinch, if not recoil from the screen, but to my complete surprise, he only giggled, revealing a row of yellow teeth set in broad gums, and clapped his long, hairy hands, as if he had seen something cheerful or funny. Tigers are natural enemies of monkeys; there are quite a few in this part of jungle, so the Little One must have seen at least one. I myself have registered their movements through my perimeter sensors on three occasions already in the short time we've been at the temple.

  The tigers kept their distance, though, put off by the constantly burning lights inside the building and by the humming of the electric generator, so that Sri was safe from them as well as from other large beasts. If they'd c
ome to within a distance I judged dangerous, I would have been prepared to put them to flight. It's really wonderful how a few small loudspeakers placed in the bushes and trees can, with the right sounds, bewilder these huge felines feared by the entire jungle, turning them into terrified, harmless animals. This method also proved effective in driving away the Little One's relatives, who are far less dangerous but more numerous and intrusive, attracted to the temple by the very thing that repels the tigers.

  Since I hadn't yet put it to use, the Little One had no idea that this sonic defense worked on tigers, and so his joy at seeing the large head of the striped cat on the monitor remains unexplained. I tried to induce what I thought would be a correct reaction by animating the picture, showing it with gaping jaws practically filling the screen, while making the temple ring with a menacing, synthetic roar that struck fear into the hearts of a multitude of beasties who reside in the nooks and crannies, but this only amused the Little One even more. Finally I resigned myself to failure, concluding with some resentment that males are utterly illogical creatures. And so the key with the letter "T" has remained in our vocabulary as the symbol for "funny."

  This animation of the tiger and the recurring insight that one male is much like the next gave me an idea. I found out recently that Sri has an emotional attachment to cartoon animations, in his closed, secretive way, of course. Would cartoons mean anything to the Little One, and how would he react to them? When he pressed a syntax key—the one with the comma and question mark—I showed him one of the old Tom and Jerry cartoons, screenfuls of wild cat-and-mouse pursuits, full of impossible gags and comic reversals, but all in the same pattern: cunning little Jerry outsmarting big bad Tom.

  I was convinced that this division of roles would please the Little One, but I was wrong. It seems that one really never knows where one is with males. He stared unblinkingly at the screen for a short while and then suddenly jumped back, overturning the chair on which he had been crouching, covering his eyes with his hands (but continuing to peep between the fingers); he at first whined and then began to emit irate, wrathful sounds. When a few moments later, following Sri's bad example, he grabbed some books lying near the keyboard, obviously intending to throw them at the screen, I had no option but to hastily change the picture.

  Instead of the feverish pace of Tom and Jerry, I showed a far more restrained, if grotesque, ballet of ostriches and hippos set to the music of Amilcare Ponchielli, also from a Disney movie of the last century. The Little One's angry snarling diminished somewhat, but he continued holding on to two books, ready at any moment to hurl them at the screen. There was no point in irritating him any further, so I switched off the monitor entirely, the sign for him to go away. He continued to sit in front of the blank screen, however, as the anger slowly drained out of him. He never again pressed the key with the comma and question mark and even avoided those around it so as not to make a mistake. Finally I had to abandon any attempt to understand the nature of the male.

  In only one other case was the Little One's response to a display so stormy, although in a different way. On all other occasions he behaved fairly good-naturedly or with indifference, although I only rarely managed to foresee his reactions. I didn't succeed either when I rather nastily wanted to see how he would react to his own ugliness, having lost sight of the fact that monkeys in the jungle have no mirrors. I showed him his own face, but he only stared at it for a few moments without recognizing himself and then turned away from the monitor, uninterested.

  We assembled an assortment of pictorial signs, using almost all the keys, so that we were now beginning to communicate. For Sri, all this would have been enormously difficult, which would have put him in a bad mood, since he considered himself, in all modesty, a genius of communication science (and a lot of related areas as well—typical male moderation). Fortunately, jealousy spared him the trouble. After Sri's first outburst, I continued to work with the Little One—concealing this from Sri, but dropping enough hints from time to time for him to have misgivings. Interestingly, I had no qualms of conscience about this at all. It seems that women quickly get used to being unfaithful once they make a start. Only the first time is difficult.

  Sri, conveniently for us, was often away from the temple. The life of the jungle, so different from the aseptic environment of the University, fascinated him more and more; he spent a lot of time roaming about, protected by my constant surveillance. As soon as he stepped beyond the nearest trees, I would switch on the monitor, and the Little One would materialize in front of it, because he too had been lurking somewhere in the vicinity, like a patient lover waiting for Sri to leave. Though our vocabulary was quite rich, allowing exchanges of some complexity, The Little One hadn't actually told me anything yet, which was odd, because I knew from my dream that this had to happen. Something was missing, but I couldn't make out what. And then, finally, as many times before, pure chance helped me to move from a standstill.

  The spring was coming to an end. Soon the summer monsoon season would begin and the long heavy rains would keep Sri indoors, hanging around in the temple, giving me less time with the Little One. Time was running short. I decided it would be best to enlarge our picture dictionary as much as possible and to assign meanings to the few unused keys remaining on the keyboard. Perhaps the Little One could not express himself because one essential term was missing?

  He took to this additional game of associations gladly because it entertained him, responding with grimaces or sounds to the pictures I showed him when he pressed one of the new keys. As before, I observed his reactions very carefully, trying to interpret them as closely as possible, and only when I was fairly sure I had grasped them correctly did I enter the meaning he gave each picture into our dictionary.

  As the dictionary grew, an increasing diversity of pictures was needed for new associations to occur to him. If the picture on the screen reminded him of another for which we already had a key—although I generally could see no connection whatsoever, but that's men for you—he would immediately press the old key, which meant I had to come up with something new.

  The last but one of the unused keys was the letter "O." He immediately connected the first four pictures to appear on the monitor with other letters. My patience was beginning to run out because I didn't know what more to offer him.

  What in God's name could be the link between a picture of lianas, which to him for some reason meant sleep or dream, and an anthill—which also evoked sleep or dream? That's when I wished, for the first time, that the Little One weren't male (though that would have deprived me of the opportunity to make Sri jealous) because I'm convinced the whole business would have been much easier with some normal, female creature.

  On the verge of despair because I couldn't think of any other jungle item easily recognizable to him that we hadn't used already, I opted for the first time for an abstract form, though I was almost certain that he would ignore it. But like so many times before, I was wrong about the Little One's response.

  It could have been any basic geometrical figure: a triangle, square, rhombus, deltoid, or a pentagon. If I'd shown any one of them, the Little One would (as I subsequently found out) have remained uninterested because he wouldn't have recognized anything from his own experience. But by pure chance I showed him a circle, and from that moment nothing was ever the same.

  The circle, like all other geometrical shapes, was completely outside his experience, but whatever it was that caused him to stiffen and stare at the screen when a bright circular line appeared on it against a dark background must certainly have come from something outside his experience. The stiffness lasted only a few seconds, then he twitched, began to swing his arms in all directions, and to make a lot of different sounds, most of which I couldn't find in my memorized repertoire of his vocal expressions.

  Since I couldn't interpret his feverish attempts to communicate with me, I did nothing, continuing to display the empty circle on the screen. My passivity seems only to have exac
erbated his irritation, for he leaned over the keyboard and started frantically pressing keys, calling up a quick succession of relevant pictures. But I left the circle superimposed on them, because I thought he would go quite wild—throwing his Tom-and-Jerry tantrum of anger—if I removed it.

  I studied the swift dance of his fingers on the keys but could make no sense of it. I ultimately concluded that he was changing pictures on the monitor quite at random, venting the excitement aroused by the sight of the circle and doing his best to transfer this excitement to me. I had absolutely no idea why an ordinary circle should upset him so much and not a clue as to what I could do to calm him down a little. And then chance once again took a hand.

  One of my perimeter cameras reported that Sri was returning. I had a brief moment of panic, not knowing how to get rid of the Little One, who was yelping, snarling, and punching several keys at once. Then I pulled myself together, remembering that Sri had about a ten-minute walk before he got to the temple, so it wouldn't be necessary to hide the Little One in a cupboard, under a bed, or out on a window ledge....

  I had to act quickly. I did the most logical thing and turned off the monitor.

  Under normal circumstances the Little One would just go away, but these were no longer normal circumstances. When the screen went dark, he started to throw a real tantrum. Fortunately, Sri's heavy books were no longer on the table by the keyboard, just a few light plastic boxes for keeping diskettes in, and the screen survived their soft bombardment. If it hadn't, I'd have had to give Sri long and imaginative explanations as to how the monitor managed to break by itself.

  When chucking things at the screen failed to relieve the Little One's feelings and he started looking around for something heavier with which he could be more emphatic, I had no choice, especially since the sensors were reporting from the inner perimeter that Sri was no more than three or four minutes away. The screen lit up again, making the Little One's face brighten, but when it showed Tom's grinning mug instead of the expected, all-important circle, he stepped back in frustration and growled, as if considering whether to retreat or overcome his great aversion to cartoons and renew his attack.