September 25, 2025 • 29 mins
In Jewels of Aptor, Samuel R. Delanys debut novel from 1962, we are transported to a world centuries after a devastating nuclear holocaust known as the Great Fire. Here, a young woman embarks on a quest for her destiny, aided by a mysterious four-armed youth. This captivating tale serves as a prologue to Delanys subsequent work, Captives of the Flame. (Summary by BellonaTimes)
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter twelve of the Jewels of Aptor by Samuel R. Delany.
The LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Reading by Maparart,
Chapter twelve. The roughness of sand beneath one of his sides,
and the flare of the sun on the other. His
(00:22):
eyes were hot and his lids were orange over them.
He turned over and reached out to dig his fingers
into the sand. Only one hand closed. Then he remembered
opening his eyes. He rolled to his knees, the sand
grated under his knee caps. Looking out toward the water,
(00:42):
he saw that the sun hung only seaming inches above
the horizon. Then he saw the ship from its course.
He gathered it was heading toward the estuary of the
river down the beach. He began to run toward where
the rocks and vegetation cut off the end of the beach.
The sand under his feet was cool. A moment later
(01:05):
he saw Yemmy's dark figure come from the jungle. He
was heading for the same place. Geo hailed him and panting,
they joined each other. Then together they continued toward the rocks.
As they broke through the first sheet of foliage, they
bumped into the red haired girl who stood knuckling her
eyes in the shadow of the broad palm fronds. When
(01:29):
she recognized them, she joined them silently. Finally they reached
the outcropping of rock a few hundred feet up the
river bank. The rain had swelled the river's mouth to
tremendous violence. It vomited surges of brown water into the ocean,
frobbed against rocks, and boiled opaquely below them. It was
(01:50):
nearly half again as wide as Geo remembered it. Although
the sky was clear beyond the brown bile of the river,
The sea arled viciously and bared white teeth in the sun.
It took another fifteen minutes for the boat to maneuver
through the granite spikes toward the rocky embankment one hundred
(02:11):
yards away. Glancing down into the turbulence, Argo breathed gee,
but that was the only human sound against the waters roaring.
The boat's prow doffed in the swell, and then at
last her plank swung out and bumped unsteadily on the
rocky bank. Figures were gathering on deck, hey, Argo said,
(02:38):
pointing toward one. That'sis where the hell a snake in
us On Jimmy asked, that's snake down there. Geo said, look,
he pointed with his nub. They could see Snake crouched
near the gangplank itself. He was behind an alleged rock,
(02:59):
and to the people on the ship, apparently but plain
to Geo and his companions, watch it. Gea said, I'm
going down there. You stay here. He ducked off through
the vines, keeping inside of the rock's edge and the
boiling foam. The ship grew before him, and at last
(03:20):
he reached a sheltered rise just ten feet above the
nest of rock in which the forearmed boy was crouching.
Geo looked out at the boat. Geordie stood at the
head of the gangplank. The eighteen feet aboard was unsteady
with the roll of the ship. Geordie held something like
a black whip in his hand, only the end went
(03:43):
to a box like contraption. Strapped to his back with
a lash raised, he stepped on to the shifting plank.
Gea wondered what the whip contrivance was. The answer came
with a hollow sound of Snake's thoughts. That is machine
he used to cut tongue with only on whip now
(04:08):
not wire, so Snake knew he was just behind him.
As he was trying to figure exactly the implications of
what Snake had said. Suddenly, with the speed of a bird,
Shadow Snake leaped from his hiding place and landed on
the shore into the plank. He recovered from his crouch
(04:29):
and rushed down the plank toward Jordie, apparently intending to
knock him from the board. Geordie raised the lash and
it fell across the boy's shoulder. It didn't land hard,
it just dropped, but Snake suddenly reeled and went down
on one knee, grabbing the sides of the plank. Geo
was close enough to hear the boy's scream. I cut
(04:52):
your tongue out once with this thing, Geordie said, matter
of factly. Now I'm going to cut the rest of
you to pieces. He adjusted a control at his belt
and raised the lash again. Geo leaped for the plank.
He faced Geordie over the crouching boy. He wondered how
wise it had been. Then he had to stop wondering
(05:14):
and try to duck the falling lash. He couldn't. It
landed with only the weight of gravity. Brushing his cheek,
then dropping across his shoulder and down his back. He screamed.
The whole side of his face seemed seared away, and
an inch crevice burned into his shoulder and back the
(05:35):
length it touched him. He bit into white fire, trying
not to leap aside into the foaming chasm between rocks
and boat. As the lash rasped over his shoulder, sweat
flooded his eyes. His good arm, which held the edge
of the plank, was shaking like a plucked string on
a loose guitar. Snake lunched back against him, almost knocking
(05:59):
him over. When Geo blinked the tears out of his eyes,
he saw two bright welts over Snake's shoulder. He also
saw that Geordie had stepped out upon the plank and
was smiling. When the line fell again, he wasn't sure
what happened. He leaned in one direction, and suddenly Snake
(06:20):
was a dive of legs in the other. Now Snake
was just four sets of fingers on the edge of
the plank. Gea screamed again and shook. Two sets of
fingers disappeared from one side of the board and reappeared
on the other As Geordie raised the lash a fourth
time to rid the plank of this last one armed nuisance.
(06:43):
The fingers worked rapidly forward toward Jeordie's feet, until suddenly
an arm raised from beneath the plank, grabbed Jordie's foot
and tugged. The lash fell far from Geo, who was
still trembling trying to move backwards off the other unsteady
plank and keep from vomiting. At the same time, Geordie tripped,
(07:05):
but turned in time to grab the edge of the
ship's gate and steady himself. At the same time, one
leg and then another came up the other side of
the plank, and then Snake rolled into a crouching position
on the board's top. Geo got his feet under him
now and stumbled backwards off the plank, and then sat
(07:27):
down hard a few feet back on the rocks. He
clutched his good arm across his stomach, and without lowering
his eyes, leaned forward to cool his back. Jeordie, half
seated on the board, now lashed the whip's sideways. Snake
leaped a foot from the plank as the line swung
(07:48):
beneath his feet. All four arms went spidering out to
regain equilibrium. The whip struck the side of the boat,
left a burn along the hull, and came swinging back again.
Snake leapt once more and made it. Suddenly there was
a shadow over him, and Geo saw Erson stride up
(08:10):
to the end of the plank, his back to Geo.
He crouched bear like at the plank's head. All right,
now try someone a little bigger than you. Come on, kid,
get off there. I want my turn. Erson's sword was drawn.
Snake turned grabbed at something on Urson, but the big
man knocked him away as he leapt diagonally on to
(08:33):
the shore. Erson laughed over his shoulder. Humph, you don't
want the ones around my neck, he called back here,
keep these for me. He tossed the leather purse from
his belt back to the shore. Snake landed just as
Jordie flung the lash out again. Urson must have caught
(08:54):
the line across his chest, because they saw his back
suddenly stiffen. Then he leapt forward and came down with
his sword so hard that, had Jordie still been there,
his leg would have come off. Geordie leaped back on
to the edge of the ship, and the sword sliced
(09:14):
three inches into the plank. As Ersuine tried to pull
the blade out once more, Geordie sent his whip singing again.
It wrapped Erson's midsection like a black serpent and didn't
come loose. Erson howled. He flung his sword forward, which,
probably only by accident, thwunked seventeen inches through Jordie's abdomen.
(09:40):
He had bent forward, grabbed the line with both hands
and tugged backwards, screaming. Jordie took two steps onto the plank,
his mouth open, his eyes closed, and fell over the side.
Erson heaved backwards and toppled from the other side. For
a moment, they hung with the whip between them over
(10:01):
the board. The ship heaved, rolled two, the plank swiveled,
came loose, and with the board on top of them,
they crashed into the water. Geo and Snake were at
the rock's edge. Jemmy and Argo were coming up behind them.
Below them, Limbs and board bobbed through the foam. Once
(10:22):
the lion had somehow looped around Urson's neck and the
plank had turned up almost on end. Then they went
under again. With nothing between it and the rock wall
of shore, the boat began to roll in with each swell.
It came in six feet and leaned out three, Then
(10:42):
it came back another six. It took four swells, the
time of four very deep breaths, until the side of
the boat was grating up against the rocks. Geo could
hear the plank splintering down in the water, but the
sound of the water blanketed anything else that was breaking
down there. Geo took two steps backwards, clutched at his
(11:07):
stubbed arm, and threw up somebody. The captain was calling,
get her away from the rocks, Away from the rocks
before she goes to pieces. Jemmy took Geo's arm. Come on, boy,
he said, and managed to haul him onto the ship.
Argo and Snake leapt on behind them. As the boat
(11:29):
floundered away from the shore, Geo leaned against the rail
below him. The water turned on itself in the rocks,
thrashed along the river's side, and then as he raised
his eyes stretched out along the bright blade of the beach,
the long sand that rimmed the island dropped away from them,
(11:51):
a stately and austere arc gathering in its curve all
the sun's glare and throwing it back on wave and
on wave. His back hurt, his stomach was shriveled and
shaken like an old man's palsy fist. His arm was gone,
and Urson and then Argo said, look at the beach.
(12:15):
Jeal flung his eyes up and tried in one moment
to envelop whatever he saw, whatever it would be. Beneath
the roar was a tide of quiet. The sand along
the naked crescent was dull at depressions, mirror bright at rises.
At the jungle's edge, leaves and fronds sped multi tectured
(12:39):
rippling along the foliage. Each single fragment in that green
carpet hung up in the sun was one leaf, he reflected,
with two sides, and an entire system of skeleton and veins,
as his hand and arm had been, and maybe one
day would drop off two. He looked from rock to
(13:03):
rock now each was different, shaped and lined distinctly, but
losing detail as the ship floated out, as the memory
of his entire adventure was losing detail. That one there
was like a bull's head half submerged those two flat
ones together on the sand looked like the stretched winds
(13:25):
of eagles. The waves, measured and magnificent, followed one another
onto the sand, like the varying, never duplicated rhythm of
a good poem. Peaceful, ordered, and calm. He tried to
pour the chaos of urson drowning from his mind onto
(13:46):
the water. It flowed into each glass green waves trough
in which it rode, suddenly quiet up to the beach.
He spread the pain in his own body over the
web of foam and green shimmering, and was surprised because
it fit easily. Hung there well, quieted, very much, Quieted.
(14:11):
Somewhere at the foot of his brain, an understanding was
beginning to effloresse. With the sea's water under the sun,
Geo turned away from the rail, and, with the wet
deck slipping under his bare feet, he walked toward the forecastle.
He released his broken limb, and his hand hung at
(14:33):
his side. When Snake came down that evening, Jeo was
lying on his back in the bunk, following the grain
of the wood on the bottom of the bed above
his He had his good arm behind his neck. Now
Snake touched his shoulder. What is it? Geo asked, turning
on his side and sitting out from under the bunk,
(14:57):
Snake held out the leather purse to Jeo. Huh, Geo asked,
didn't you give them to Argo yet? Snake nodded, well,
why didn't you take them? Look? I don't want to
see them again. Snake pushed the purse toward him again
and added, look. Geo took the purse, opened the draw spring,
(15:20):
and turned the contents out in his hand. There were
three chains, on each of which was a gold coin
fastened by a hole near the edge. Geo frowned. How
come these are in here? He asked, I thought, where
are the jewels in ocean? Snake said, Ersuon switched them?
(15:46):
What are you talking about? Demanded Geo? What is? What
is it? Don't want tell you? I don't care what
you want, you little thief. Geo grabbed him by his shoulder.
Tell me new from back with blind priestesses, Snake explained rapidly.
(16:13):
He asked me how to use jewels when you and
Jimmy exploring? And after that, no listen to thoughts bad,
thoughts bad? But he Geo started, he saved your life.
But what is reason? Snake said? At end, you saw
(16:36):
his thoughts at the end, asked Geo, what did he
think you sleep? Please? Snake said, lot of.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Hate, lot of bad hate. There was a pause in
the voice in his head and love. Geo began to cry.
A bubble of sound, and the back of his throat burst,
and he turned onto the pillow and tried to bite
through the sound with his teeth. The tiredness, the fear
(17:09):
for Urson, for his arm, and the change which hurt
his whole body ached his back hurt in two sharp lines,
and he couldn't stop crying. Jimmy, who had now decided
to take the bunk above Geo, came back a few
minutes after mass Geo had just awakened. Geo laughed, I
(17:35):
found out what it was we saw on the beach
that made.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Us so dangerous? How, asked Jemmy, When what was it?
Same time you did, Geo said, I just looked, and
then Snake explained the details of it to me later,
when Yimmy repeated, I just took a nap, and he
(17:59):
went through the whole thing with me. Then what was
it you saw we saw? Well, first of all, do
you remember what Geordie was before he was shipwrecked on aptour.
Didn't Ago say he was studying to be a priest?
Old Ago? I mean, right, said Geo. Now do you
(18:24):
remember what my theory was about what we saw? Did
you have a theory Jemmy asked about horror and pain
making receptive to whatever it was? Oh that, Jemmy said,
I remember, yes, I was also right about that. Now
(18:46):
add to all this some theory from Hamma's lecture on
the double impulse of life. It wasn't a thing we saw.
It was a situation, or rather an experience we had. Also,
it didn't have to be on the beach. It could
have happened anywhere. Man and his constantly diametric motivations, is
(19:08):
always trying to reconcile opposites. In fact, you can say
that action is a reconciliation of the duality of his motivation.
Now take all that we've been through, the confusion, the pain,
the disorder. Then reconcile that with the great order obvious
in something like the sea, with its rhythm, its tides
(19:32):
and waves, its overpowering calm, or the ordering of cells
in a leaf or a constellation of stars. If you
can do it, something happens to you you grow, you
become a bigger person able to understand or reconcile more.
(19:53):
All right, said Jimmy. And that's what we saw, or
the experience had when we looked at the beach from
the ship this morning. Chaos caught in order, the order
defining chaos. All right again, Jimmy said, And I'll even
assn that Geordie knew that the two impulses of this
(20:17):
experience were one something terrible and confused, like seeing ten
men hacked to pieces by vampires, or seeing a film
of the little boy getting his tongue pulled out, or
coming through what we came through since we landed on Aptoll,
and two something calm and ordered, like the beach in
(20:40):
the sea. Now, why would he want to kill someone
simply because they might have gone through what amounts I
guess to the basic religious experience? You picked just the
right word, Geo smiled. Now Geordie was an in the
(21:01):
not too liberal religion of Argo. Geordie and Snake had
been through nearly as much on Aptor as we had,
and they survived. And they also emerged from that jungle
of horror onto that great arcing rhythm of waves and
sand and they went through just what you and I
(21:21):
an Argo went through, Little Argo, I mean, And it
was just at that point when the blind priestesses of
Argo made contact with Geordie. They did so by means
of those vision screens we saw them with which can
receive sound and pictures from just about any place, but
can also project at least sound to just about anywhere too.
(21:45):
In other words, right in the middle of this religious
or mystic or whatever you want to call it experience,
a voice materialized out of thin air that claimed to
be the voice of the Goddess. Have you any idea
what this did to his mind? I imagine it took
all the real significance out of the whole thing. Jimmy
(22:09):
said it would for me, it did, said Geo. Geordie
wasn't what you'd call stable before that. If anything, this
made him more so. It also stopped his mental functioning
from working in the normal way. And Snake, who was
reading his mind at the time, suddenly saw himself watching
(22:31):
the terrifying seiling up process of an active and competent,
if not healthy mind. He saw it again in Erson.
It's apparently a pretty stiff thing to watch. That's why
he stopped reading Erson's thoughts. The idea of stealing the
jewels for himself was slowly eating away Erson's balance, the understanding,
(22:55):
the ability to reconcile disparities like the incident with the
blue lizard, things like that, all of which were signs
we didn't get. Snake contacted Hama by telepathy, almost accidentally,
and Hama was something to hold on to for the boy. Still,
why did Jordy want to kill anybody who had experienced
(23:18):
this voice of God? And all because Geordie had by
now managed to do what a static mind always does.
The situation, the beach, the whole thing suddenly meant for
him the revelation of a concrete God. Now he knew
that Snake had contacted something also, something which the blind
(23:42):
Priestesses told him was thoroughly evil, an enemy, a devil.
On the raft, on the boat, he religiously tried to
convert Snake till at last, in evangelical fury, he cut
the boy's tongue out with the electric generator and the
hot wire which the blind priestesses had given him before
(24:05):
he left. Why did he want to get rid of
anybody who had seen his beach a sacred place to
him by now, One because the devils were too strong
and he didn't want anybody else possessed by them. Snake
had been too much trouble resisting conversion, and two because
(24:27):
he was jealous that someone else might have that moment
of exultation and hear the voice of the goddess. Also
in other words, summarized Jimmy, he thought what happened to
him and Snake was something supernatural, actually connected with the
(24:47):
beach itself, and didn't want it to happen to anybody else.
That's right, said Geo, lying back in his buck, Which
is sort of understand. They didn't come in contact with
any of the technology of after her, and so it
might well have seemed that way. Jemmy leaned back. Also, yeah,
(25:11):
he said, I can see how the same thing Almos
Almas might have happened to me if everything had been
the same. Geo closed his eyes, Snake came down and
took the top bunk, and when he slept, Snake told
him of Urson, of his last thoughts, and surprisingly things
(25:33):
he mostly knew. Emerging from the forecastle. The next morning,
he felt bright sunlight slice across his face. He had
to squint, and when he did so, he saw her
sitting cross legged on the stretched canvas top and of
a suspended lifeboat high up there. He called hello, she
(25:54):
called down. How are you feeling? Geo shrugged. Argo slipped
her feet over the gunwale, and with paper bag in hand,
dropped to the deck. She bopped up next to his shoulder,
grinned and said, hey, come on back with me. I
want to show you something. Sure, he followed her. Suddenly
(26:17):
she looked serious. Your arm is worrying you. Why, Geo shrugged.
You don't feel like a whole person. I guess you're
not really a whole person. Don't be silly, said Argo. Besides,
maybe Snake will let you have one of his. How
(26:39):
are the medical facilities in Leptar. I don't think they're
up to anything like that. We did grafting of limbs
back in Aptor, Argo said, a most interesting way. We
got around the antibody problem too, you see, but that
was back in Aptor. Geo said, this is the real
(27:01):
world we're going into now. Maybe I can get a
doctor from the temple to come over. She shrugged, And
then maybe I won't be able to It's a pleasant thought.
CEO said. When they reached the back of the ship,
Argo took out a contraption from the paper bag. I
(27:24):
salvage this in my tunic. Hope it dried off well
enough last night. It's your motor, GEO said, um Hm
said Argo. She put it on a low set of
lockers by the cabin's back wall. How are you going
to work it, he asked. It's got to have that
(27:45):
stuff electricity. There is more than one way to shoe
a centipede, Argo assured him. She reached behind the locker
and pulled up a strange gizmo of glass and wire.
I got the lens from says, she explained. She's awfully nice. Really,
(28:05):
she says, I can have my own laboratory all to myself.
And I said she could have all the politics, which
I think was wise of me. Consider it, don't you.
She bent over the contraption. Now this lens here focuses
the sunlight. Isn't it a beautiful day on these thermal couples.
(28:30):
I got the extra metal from the ship's smith. He's sweet. Hey,
we're going to have to compare poems from now on.
I mean, I'm sure you're going to write a whole
handful about all of this, I certainly am anyway you
connect it up here, She fastened two wires to two
(28:51):
other wires, adjusted the lens, and the tips of the
thermal couple blowed red. The armature tugged once around its pivot,
and then tugged around once more. Geo glanced up and
saw Snake and Jimmy standing above them, looking over the
rail on the cabin's roof. They grinded at each other,
(29:13):
and then Geo looked back at the motor. It whipped around, steadily,
gaining speed until it whirred into an invisible copper haze.
Look at that thing, go, breathed Argo. Will you just
look at that thing? Go? End of chapter twelve, end
(29:36):
of The Jewels of Aptor by Samuel R. Delaney.
Chapter twelve of the Jewels of Aptor by Samuel R. Delany.
The LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Reading by Maparart,
Chapter twelve. The roughness of sand beneath one of his sides,
and the flare of the sun on the other. His
(00:22):
eyes were hot and his lids were orange over them.
He turned over and reached out to dig his fingers
into the sand. Only one hand closed. Then he remembered
opening his eyes. He rolled to his knees, the sand
grated under his knee caps. Looking out toward the water,
(00:42):
he saw that the sun hung only seaming inches above
the horizon. Then he saw the ship from its course.
He gathered it was heading toward the estuary of the
river down the beach. He began to run toward where
the rocks and vegetation cut off the end of the beach.
The sand under his feet was cool. A moment later
(01:05):
he saw Yemmy's dark figure come from the jungle. He
was heading for the same place. Geo hailed him and panting,
they joined each other. Then together they continued toward the rocks.
As they broke through the first sheet of foliage, they
bumped into the red haired girl who stood knuckling her
eyes in the shadow of the broad palm fronds. When
(01:29):
she recognized them, she joined them silently. Finally they reached
the outcropping of rock a few hundred feet up the
river bank. The rain had swelled the river's mouth to
tremendous violence. It vomited surges of brown water into the ocean,
frobbed against rocks, and boiled opaquely below them. It was
(01:50):
nearly half again as wide as Geo remembered it. Although
the sky was clear beyond the brown bile of the river,
The sea arled viciously and bared white teeth in the sun.
It took another fifteen minutes for the boat to maneuver
through the granite spikes toward the rocky embankment one hundred
(02:11):
yards away. Glancing down into the turbulence, Argo breathed gee,
but that was the only human sound against the waters roaring.
The boat's prow doffed in the swell, and then at
last her plank swung out and bumped unsteadily on the
rocky bank. Figures were gathering on deck, hey, Argo said,
(02:38):
pointing toward one. That'sis where the hell a snake in
us On Jimmy asked, that's snake down there. Geo said, look,
he pointed with his nub. They could see Snake crouched
near the gangplank itself. He was behind an alleged rock,
(02:59):
and to the people on the ship, apparently but plain
to Geo and his companions, watch it. Gea said, I'm
going down there. You stay here. He ducked off through
the vines, keeping inside of the rock's edge and the
boiling foam. The ship grew before him, and at last
(03:20):
he reached a sheltered rise just ten feet above the
nest of rock in which the forearmed boy was crouching.
Geo looked out at the boat. Geordie stood at the
head of the gangplank. The eighteen feet aboard was unsteady
with the roll of the ship. Geordie held something like
a black whip in his hand, only the end went
(03:43):
to a box like contraption. Strapped to his back with
a lash raised, he stepped on to the shifting plank.
Gea wondered what the whip contrivance was. The answer came
with a hollow sound of Snake's thoughts. That is machine
he used to cut tongue with only on whip now
(04:08):
not wire, so Snake knew he was just behind him.
As he was trying to figure exactly the implications of
what Snake had said. Suddenly, with the speed of a bird,
Shadow Snake leaped from his hiding place and landed on
the shore into the plank. He recovered from his crouch
(04:29):
and rushed down the plank toward Jordie, apparently intending to
knock him from the board. Geordie raised the lash and
it fell across the boy's shoulder. It didn't land hard,
it just dropped, but Snake suddenly reeled and went down
on one knee, grabbing the sides of the plank. Geo
was close enough to hear the boy's scream. I cut
(04:52):
your tongue out once with this thing, Geordie said, matter
of factly. Now I'm going to cut the rest of
you to pieces. He adjusted a control at his belt
and raised the lash again. Geo leaped for the plank.
He faced Geordie over the crouching boy. He wondered how
wise it had been. Then he had to stop wondering
(05:14):
and try to duck the falling lash. He couldn't. It
landed with only the weight of gravity. Brushing his cheek,
then dropping across his shoulder and down his back. He screamed.
The whole side of his face seemed seared away, and
an inch crevice burned into his shoulder and back the
(05:35):
length it touched him. He bit into white fire, trying
not to leap aside into the foaming chasm between rocks
and boat. As the lash rasped over his shoulder, sweat
flooded his eyes. His good arm, which held the edge
of the plank, was shaking like a plucked string on
a loose guitar. Snake lunched back against him, almost knocking
(05:59):
him over. When Geo blinked the tears out of his eyes,
he saw two bright welts over Snake's shoulder. He also
saw that Geordie had stepped out upon the plank and
was smiling. When the line fell again, he wasn't sure
what happened. He leaned in one direction, and suddenly Snake
(06:20):
was a dive of legs in the other. Now Snake
was just four sets of fingers on the edge of
the plank. Gea screamed again and shook. Two sets of
fingers disappeared from one side of the board and reappeared
on the other As Geordie raised the lash a fourth
time to rid the plank of this last one armed nuisance.
(06:43):
The fingers worked rapidly forward toward Jeordie's feet, until suddenly
an arm raised from beneath the plank, grabbed Jordie's foot
and tugged. The lash fell far from Geo, who was
still trembling trying to move backwards off the other unsteady
plank and keep from vomiting. At the same time, Geordie tripped,
(07:05):
but turned in time to grab the edge of the
ship's gate and steady himself. At the same time, one
leg and then another came up the other side of
the plank, and then Snake rolled into a crouching position
on the board's top. Geo got his feet under him
now and stumbled backwards off the plank, and then sat
(07:27):
down hard a few feet back on the rocks. He
clutched his good arm across his stomach, and without lowering
his eyes, leaned forward to cool his back. Jeordie, half
seated on the board, now lashed the whip's sideways. Snake
leaped a foot from the plank as the line swung
(07:48):
beneath his feet. All four arms went spidering out to
regain equilibrium. The whip struck the side of the boat,
left a burn along the hull, and came swinging back again.
Snake leapt once more and made it. Suddenly there was
a shadow over him, and Geo saw Erson stride up
(08:10):
to the end of the plank, his back to Geo.
He crouched bear like at the plank's head. All right,
now try someone a little bigger than you. Come on, kid,
get off there. I want my turn. Erson's sword was drawn.
Snake turned grabbed at something on Urson, but the big
man knocked him away as he leapt diagonally on to
(08:33):
the shore. Erson laughed over his shoulder. Humph, you don't
want the ones around my neck, he called back here,
keep these for me. He tossed the leather purse from
his belt back to the shore. Snake landed just as
Jordie flung the lash out again. Urson must have caught
(08:54):
the line across his chest, because they saw his back
suddenly stiffen. Then he leapt forward and came down with
his sword so hard that, had Jordie still been there,
his leg would have come off. Geordie leaped back on
to the edge of the ship, and the sword sliced
(09:14):
three inches into the plank. As Ersuine tried to pull
the blade out once more, Geordie sent his whip singing again.
It wrapped Erson's midsection like a black serpent and didn't
come loose. Erson howled. He flung his sword forward, which,
probably only by accident, thwunked seventeen inches through Jordie's abdomen.
(09:40):
He had bent forward, grabbed the line with both hands
and tugged backwards, screaming. Jordie took two steps onto the plank,
his mouth open, his eyes closed, and fell over the side.
Erson heaved backwards and toppled from the other side. For
a moment, they hung with the whip between them over
(10:01):
the board. The ship heaved, rolled two, the plank swiveled,
came loose, and with the board on top of them,
they crashed into the water. Geo and Snake were at
the rock's edge. Jemmy and Argo were coming up behind them.
Below them, Limbs and board bobbed through the foam. Once
(10:22):
the lion had somehow looped around Urson's neck and the
plank had turned up almost on end. Then they went
under again. With nothing between it and the rock wall
of shore, the boat began to roll in with each swell.
It came in six feet and leaned out three, Then
(10:42):
it came back another six. It took four swells, the
time of four very deep breaths, until the side of
the boat was grating up against the rocks. Geo could
hear the plank splintering down in the water, but the
sound of the water blanketed anything else that was breaking
down there. Geo took two steps backwards, clutched at his
(11:07):
stubbed arm, and threw up somebody. The captain was calling,
get her away from the rocks, Away from the rocks
before she goes to pieces. Jemmy took Geo's arm. Come on, boy,
he said, and managed to haul him onto the ship.
Argo and Snake leapt on behind them. As the boat
(11:29):
floundered away from the shore, Geo leaned against the rail
below him. The water turned on itself in the rocks,
thrashed along the river's side, and then as he raised
his eyes stretched out along the bright blade of the beach,
the long sand that rimmed the island dropped away from them,
(11:51):
a stately and austere arc gathering in its curve all
the sun's glare and throwing it back on wave and
on wave. His back hurt, his stomach was shriveled and
shaken like an old man's palsy fist. His arm was gone,
and Urson and then Argo said, look at the beach.
(12:15):
Jeal flung his eyes up and tried in one moment
to envelop whatever he saw, whatever it would be. Beneath
the roar was a tide of quiet. The sand along
the naked crescent was dull at depressions, mirror bright at rises.
At the jungle's edge, leaves and fronds sped multi tectured
(12:39):
rippling along the foliage. Each single fragment in that green
carpet hung up in the sun was one leaf, he reflected,
with two sides, and an entire system of skeleton and veins,
as his hand and arm had been, and maybe one
day would drop off two. He looked from rock to
(13:03):
rock now each was different, shaped and lined distinctly, but
losing detail as the ship floated out, as the memory
of his entire adventure was losing detail. That one there
was like a bull's head half submerged those two flat
ones together on the sand looked like the stretched winds
(13:25):
of eagles. The waves, measured and magnificent, followed one another
onto the sand, like the varying, never duplicated rhythm of
a good poem. Peaceful, ordered, and calm. He tried to
pour the chaos of urson drowning from his mind onto
(13:46):
the water. It flowed into each glass green waves trough
in which it rode, suddenly quiet up to the beach.
He spread the pain in his own body over the
web of foam and green shimmering, and was surprised because
it fit easily. Hung there well, quieted, very much, Quieted.
(14:11):
Somewhere at the foot of his brain, an understanding was
beginning to effloresse. With the sea's water under the sun,
Geo turned away from the rail, and, with the wet
deck slipping under his bare feet, he walked toward the forecastle.
He released his broken limb, and his hand hung at
(14:33):
his side. When Snake came down that evening, Jeo was
lying on his back in the bunk, following the grain
of the wood on the bottom of the bed above
his He had his good arm behind his neck. Now
Snake touched his shoulder. What is it? Geo asked, turning
on his side and sitting out from under the bunk,
(14:57):
Snake held out the leather purse to Jeo. Huh, Geo asked,
didn't you give them to Argo yet? Snake nodded, well,
why didn't you take them? Look? I don't want to
see them again. Snake pushed the purse toward him again
and added, look. Geo took the purse, opened the draw spring,
(15:20):
and turned the contents out in his hand. There were
three chains, on each of which was a gold coin
fastened by a hole near the edge. Geo frowned. How
come these are in here? He asked, I thought, where
are the jewels in ocean? Snake said, Ersuon switched them?
(15:46):
What are you talking about? Demanded Geo? What is? What
is it? Don't want tell you? I don't care what
you want, you little thief. Geo grabbed him by his shoulder.
Tell me new from back with blind priestesses, Snake explained rapidly.
(16:13):
He asked me how to use jewels when you and
Jimmy exploring? And after that, no listen to thoughts bad,
thoughts bad? But he Geo started, he saved your life.
But what is reason? Snake said? At end, you saw
(16:36):
his thoughts at the end, asked Geo, what did he
think you sleep? Please? Snake said, lot of.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Hate, lot of bad hate. There was a pause in
the voice in his head and love. Geo began to cry.
A bubble of sound, and the back of his throat burst,
and he turned onto the pillow and tried to bite
through the sound with his teeth. The tiredness, the fear
(17:09):
for Urson, for his arm, and the change which hurt
his whole body ached his back hurt in two sharp lines,
and he couldn't stop crying. Jimmy, who had now decided
to take the bunk above Geo, came back a few
minutes after mass Geo had just awakened. Geo laughed, I
(17:35):
found out what it was we saw on the beach
that made.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Us so dangerous? How, asked Jemmy, When what was it?
Same time you did, Geo said, I just looked, and
then Snake explained the details of it to me later,
when Yimmy repeated, I just took a nap, and he
(17:59):
went through the whole thing with me. Then what was
it you saw we saw? Well, first of all, do
you remember what Geordie was before he was shipwrecked on aptour.
Didn't Ago say he was studying to be a priest?
Old Ago? I mean, right, said Geo. Now do you
(18:24):
remember what my theory was about what we saw? Did
you have a theory Jemmy asked about horror and pain
making receptive to whatever it was? Oh that, Jemmy said,
I remember, yes, I was also right about that. Now
(18:46):
add to all this some theory from Hamma's lecture on
the double impulse of life. It wasn't a thing we saw.
It was a situation, or rather an experience we had. Also,
it didn't have to be on the beach. It could
have happened anywhere. Man and his constantly diametric motivations, is
(19:08):
always trying to reconcile opposites. In fact, you can say
that action is a reconciliation of the duality of his motivation.
Now take all that we've been through, the confusion, the pain,
the disorder. Then reconcile that with the great order obvious
in something like the sea, with its rhythm, its tides
(19:32):
and waves, its overpowering calm, or the ordering of cells
in a leaf or a constellation of stars. If you
can do it, something happens to you you grow, you
become a bigger person able to understand or reconcile more.
(19:53):
All right, said Jimmy. And that's what we saw, or
the experience had when we looked at the beach from
the ship this morning. Chaos caught in order, the order
defining chaos. All right again, Jimmy said, And I'll even
assn that Geordie knew that the two impulses of this
(20:17):
experience were one something terrible and confused, like seeing ten
men hacked to pieces by vampires, or seeing a film
of the little boy getting his tongue pulled out, or
coming through what we came through since we landed on Aptoll,
and two something calm and ordered, like the beach in
(20:40):
the sea. Now, why would he want to kill someone
simply because they might have gone through what amounts I
guess to the basic religious experience? You picked just the
right word, Geo smiled. Now Geordie was an in the
(21:01):
not too liberal religion of Argo. Geordie and Snake had
been through nearly as much on Aptor as we had,
and they survived. And they also emerged from that jungle
of horror onto that great arcing rhythm of waves and
sand and they went through just what you and I
(21:21):
an Argo went through, Little Argo, I mean, And it
was just at that point when the blind priestesses of
Argo made contact with Geordie. They did so by means
of those vision screens we saw them with which can
receive sound and pictures from just about any place, but
can also project at least sound to just about anywhere too.
(21:45):
In other words, right in the middle of this religious
or mystic or whatever you want to call it experience,
a voice materialized out of thin air that claimed to
be the voice of the Goddess. Have you any idea
what this did to his mind? I imagine it took
all the real significance out of the whole thing. Jimmy
(22:09):
said it would for me, it did, said Geo. Geordie
wasn't what you'd call stable before that. If anything, this
made him more so. It also stopped his mental functioning
from working in the normal way. And Snake, who was
reading his mind at the time, suddenly saw himself watching
(22:31):
the terrifying seiling up process of an active and competent,
if not healthy mind. He saw it again in Erson.
It's apparently a pretty stiff thing to watch. That's why
he stopped reading Erson's thoughts. The idea of stealing the
jewels for himself was slowly eating away Erson's balance, the understanding,
(22:55):
the ability to reconcile disparities like the incident with the
blue lizard, things like that, all of which were signs
we didn't get. Snake contacted Hama by telepathy, almost accidentally,
and Hama was something to hold on to for the boy. Still,
why did Jordy want to kill anybody who had experienced
(23:18):
this voice of God? And all because Geordie had by
now managed to do what a static mind always does.
The situation, the beach, the whole thing suddenly meant for
him the revelation of a concrete God. Now he knew
that Snake had contacted something also, something which the blind
(23:42):
Priestesses told him was thoroughly evil, an enemy, a devil.
On the raft, on the boat, he religiously tried to
convert Snake till at last, in evangelical fury, he cut
the boy's tongue out with the electric generator and the
hot wire which the blind priestesses had given him before
(24:05):
he left. Why did he want to get rid of
anybody who had seen his beach a sacred place to
him by now, One because the devils were too strong
and he didn't want anybody else possessed by them. Snake
had been too much trouble resisting conversion, and two because
(24:27):
he was jealous that someone else might have that moment
of exultation and hear the voice of the goddess. Also
in other words, summarized Jimmy, he thought what happened to
him and Snake was something supernatural, actually connected with the
(24:47):
beach itself, and didn't want it to happen to anybody else.
That's right, said Geo, lying back in his buck, Which
is sort of understand. They didn't come in contact with
any of the technology of after her, and so it
might well have seemed that way. Jemmy leaned back. Also, yeah,
(25:11):
he said, I can see how the same thing Almos
Almas might have happened to me if everything had been
the same. Geo closed his eyes, Snake came down and
took the top bunk, and when he slept, Snake told
him of Urson, of his last thoughts, and surprisingly things
(25:33):
he mostly knew. Emerging from the forecastle. The next morning,
he felt bright sunlight slice across his face. He had
to squint, and when he did so, he saw her
sitting cross legged on the stretched canvas top and of
a suspended lifeboat high up there. He called hello, she
(25:54):
called down. How are you feeling? Geo shrugged. Argo slipped
her feet over the gunwale, and with paper bag in hand,
dropped to the deck. She bopped up next to his shoulder,
grinned and said, hey, come on back with me. I
want to show you something. Sure, he followed her. Suddenly
(26:17):
she looked serious. Your arm is worrying you. Why, Geo shrugged.
You don't feel like a whole person. I guess you're
not really a whole person. Don't be silly, said Argo. Besides,
maybe Snake will let you have one of his. How
(26:39):
are the medical facilities in Leptar. I don't think they're
up to anything like that. We did grafting of limbs
back in Aptor, Argo said, a most interesting way. We
got around the antibody problem too, you see, but that
was back in Aptor. Geo said, this is the real
(27:01):
world we're going into now. Maybe I can get a
doctor from the temple to come over. She shrugged, And
then maybe I won't be able to It's a pleasant thought.
CEO said. When they reached the back of the ship,
Argo took out a contraption from the paper bag. I
(27:24):
salvage this in my tunic. Hope it dried off well
enough last night. It's your motor, GEO said, um Hm
said Argo. She put it on a low set of
lockers by the cabin's back wall. How are you going
to work it, he asked. It's got to have that
(27:45):
stuff electricity. There is more than one way to shoe
a centipede, Argo assured him. She reached behind the locker
and pulled up a strange gizmo of glass and wire.
I got the lens from says, she explained. She's awfully nice. Really,
(28:05):
she says, I can have my own laboratory all to myself.
And I said she could have all the politics, which
I think was wise of me. Consider it, don't you.
She bent over the contraption. Now this lens here focuses
the sunlight. Isn't it a beautiful day on these thermal couples.
(28:30):
I got the extra metal from the ship's smith. He's sweet. Hey,
we're going to have to compare poems from now on.
I mean, I'm sure you're going to write a whole
handful about all of this, I certainly am anyway you
connect it up here, She fastened two wires to two
(28:51):
other wires, adjusted the lens, and the tips of the
thermal couple blowed red. The armature tugged once around its pivot,
and then tugged around once more. Geo glanced up and
saw Snake and Jimmy standing above them, looking over the
rail on the cabin's roof. They grinded at each other,
(29:13):
and then Geo looked back at the motor. It whipped around, steadily,
gaining speed until it whirred into an invisible copper haze.
Look at that thing, go, breathed Argo. Will you just
look at that thing? Go? End of chapter twelve, end
(29:36):
of The Jewels of Aptor by Samuel R. Delaney.
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