A Hat Full Of Sky - Terry Pratchett [91]
She took a deep breath and stepped across.
Nothing much changed. The sand felt gritty underfoot and crunched when she walked over it, as she expected, but when it was kicked up, it fell back as slowly as thistledown, and she hadn’t expected that. The air wasn’t cold, but it was thin and prickly to breathe.
The door shut softly behind her.
Thank you, said the voices of the hiver. What do we do now?
Tiffany looked around her, and up at the stars. They weren’t ones that she recognized.
“You die, I think,” she said.
But there is no “me” to die, said the voices of the hiver. There is only us.
Tiffany took a deep breath. This was about words, and she knew about words. “Here is a story to believe,” she said. “Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats, and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we’re frightened, the hair on our skin stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we’ve ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. Would you like the rest of the story?”
Tell us, said the hiver.
“I’m made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They’re in the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I’m made up of everyone I’ve ever met who’s changed the way I think. So who is ‘me’?”
The piece that just told us that story, said the hiver. The piece that’s truly you.
“Well…yes. But you must have that too. You know you say you’re ‘us’—who is it saying it? Who is saying you’re not you? You’re not different from us. We’re just much, much better at forgetting. And we know when not to listen to the monkey.”
You’ve just puzzled us, said the hiver.
“The old bit of our brains that wants to be head monkey, and attacks when it’s surprised,” said Tiffany. “It reacts. It doesn’t think. Being human is knowing when not to be the monkey or the lizard or any of the other old echoes. But when you take people over, you silence the human part. You listen to the monkey. The monkey doesn’t know what it needs, only what it wants. No, you are not an ‘us. ’You are an ‘I.’”
I, me, said the hiver. I. Who am I?
“Do you want a name? That helps.”
Yes. A name….
“I’ve always liked Arthur as a name.”
Arthur, said the hiver. I like Arthur too. And if I am, I can stop. What happens next?
“The creatures you…took over, didn’t they die?”
Yes, said the Arthur. But we—but I didn’t see what happened. They just stopped being here.
Tiffany looked around at the endless sand. She couldn’t see anybody, but there was something out there that suggested movement. It was the occasional change in the light, perhaps, as if she was catching glimpses of something she was not supposed to see.
“I think,” she said, “that you have to cross the desert.”
What’s on the other side? asked Arthur.
Tiffany hesitated.
“Some people think you go to a better world,” she said. “Some people think you come back to this one in a different body. And some think there’s just nothing. They think you just stop.”
And what do you think? Arthur asked.
“I think that there are no words to describe it,” said Tiffany.
Is that true? said Arthur.
“I think that’s why you have to cross the desert,” said Tiffany. “To find out.”
I will look forward to it. Thank you.
“Good-bye…Arthur.”
She felt the hiver fall away. There wasn’t much sign of it—a movement of a few sand grains, a sizzle in the air—but it slid away slowly across the black sand.
“An’ bad cess an’ good riddance tae ye!” Rob Anybody shouted after it.
“No,” said Tiffany. “Don’t say that.”
“Aye, but it killed folk to stay alive.”
“It didn’t want to. It didn’t know how people work.”
“That was a fine load of o’ blethers ye gave it, at any rate,” said Rob admiringly. “Not even a gonnagle could make up a load o’ blethers like that.”
Tiffany wondered if it had