Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [102]
He was, he felt, like a wave, which travels briefly across the surface of an ocean—the waters form the wave momentarily and then transfer that wave-energy elsewhere. The wave has no permanent parts; it is only a process, inseparable from the rest of the ocean, as he, Wesley, was not a separate entity confronting the universe. Rather, he was a manifestation of the universe. He was a natural process of a nameless infinite “it.”
He remembered something Shikibu had told him, when he prodded her about explaining Zen archery. She’d said the archer himself does not shoot the arrow. If the technique is right, the shot falls spontaneously. She explained it this way: When a sage bush produces a flower, the sage doesn’t “know” that a bee will be attracted to it; and when the bee takes the pollen from that flower, the bee doesn’t “know” that some of it will be deposited on his back, and later, miles away, pollinate another sage plant. Yet the bee does take the pollen and, thus, other sage is pollinated. Through both bee and sage, “it” dances. Just so, the archer, in proper frame of mind, does not deliberately shoot the arrow. “It” shoots the arrow.
Now, just as spontaneously as that proper arrow-shot, Wesley found himself turning toward Shikibu, and kissing her, as she spontaneously did the same to him, and through them both, “it” danced.
The Dissenters had returned to the caves and tried to retrieve their books. But the cache had been found, and the books were gone.
They had then flown, on the backs of the swift haguya, high up into the mountains.
Now they were encamped for the night just below a very windy pass, an inhospitable place not likely to be visited by pragmatic Rampartians.
The Dissenter tradition of campfire bard-stories was being fulfilled. The haguya were perched on surrounding rocks, listening.
Suddenly one of the haguya, perched on the highest rock, took flight in alarm.
Coyote climbed up to the rock to look around. He saw a figure coming from far down the trail. The Dissenters hid, and when the newcomer appeared, Coyote confronted him.
He was a CS officer, but he wore no sidearm.
“I want to join you,” he said without preamble.
“Why?” asked Coyote.
One of the haguya swooped in low, almost touching the CS officer. He looked at it in awe.
“I was at CephCom when you people came. After I saw you, and those creatures … I had to, uh, rethink some basic assumptions. In other words, I decided everything I’d been taught was a lot of bull.”
Coyote gave the man a long, penetrating stare.
“Good reason,” he said finally. He looked at the man’s nametag. “Does anyone else know you’re here, Lieutenant Redman?”
“Well, actually, I’m accompanied by some others who’d like to join as well. We’ve brought a little present.”
Coyote climbed nimbly back onto the rock, to see if he could verify Redman’s statement. He saw a most amazing convoy. Books, the Dissenters’ books, still wrapped in their old cloth bundles, were being brought up the trail at the head of a procession of several hundred unarmed CS men and women. At the front was an old, white-haired, slightly paunchy Hispanic man. Coyote recognized him as a Dissenter-sympathizer from years back, whose name had been Montoya. He’d been arrested for trying to smuggle a book to the Dissenters.
The new arrivals had brought blank paper with them. Later that night Amoret got hold of a pad and a pencil, and went to sit alone at the top of the windy pass.
All the excitement had inspired her. She felt like writing a story.
She wanted to tell a story about Captain Picard. She would extrapolate, interpret, tell it how she felt like telling it.
For some reason—and she had no idea where this inspiration came from—the first adventure she imagined had him shipwrecked on an ocean, on some far-off planet. He would float and swim until he found a beach,