Zollocco: A Novel of Another Universe Read online

  I have discovered something absolutely terrifying. The vegetation moves; it walks. I don't know if I dare go into the woods again, yet if I don't I will starve to death. It sounds ludicrous, but I was chased by a bush. I was stalking a water bird when I saw what looked like a perfectly ordinary forsythia bush move toward me. Astonished, I froze. To my horror, the yellow flowered plant continued towards me gaining speed. Frightened out of my wits I dashed (I didn't know in what direction I headed) as my fright willed. I ended up in the dell where the module was, and I dove into the structure, sealing the doors behind me. After I calmed a bit, I turned on the viewer to see if the forsythia waited for me outside of the module. It wasn't there.

  Forsythias never did get along with humans, especially not since humans learned to make wine out of forsythia. We expect the human will come out again when it gets hungry. We find it interesting that the human has retained its instinct to cower in a cave, albeit a can instead of a cave. If We are going to try and domesticate this human, We'd best get it integrated with Ourselves immediately. There is still a smell of illness to it that makes Us sick. We wonder if We could get the thing to a true Forest state of health, instead of that awful can pallor. We have a few things We would like to try to get it to do. The mirnie feels overburdened with its berries, a horned rabbit has completed what it wants to do with this life, and of course the lily pond needs relief. We must get the human to eat these things or it won't survive. Now that the human is interesting Us, We don't want it to die. While We wait for the human to come out of hiding, Zollocco will listen to its dreams and tell Us how it got here.

  "Well, so far I don't get very much, but what I do get is very, let's see, exotic, yeah, that's the word, exotic. The human used to sleep in a second story room made out of wood! Isn't that amazing? It didn't sleep in a metal can. I wonder which world has evolved so far. Oh, and on the green wall of the room there were printed rows and rows and rows of pictures of a bird of prey. In one claw the bird-it is always the same picture of the same bird repeated over and over--the bird has taken away some dumb human's arrows."

  "Good for that bird!" Our winged selves break in. "And in the other claw, the bird clutches a sheaf of vegetation. Every night the human looks around at those walls and says to itself, ‘I will not be part of a world that destroys itself.'

  “How exciting! I wonder if We will be able to see the planet when it blows up."

  "Zollocco?" ask Our soil worms, "Why do you think the planet will blow up?"

  "I don't know. That's just the sense I get from the human's dream."

  "It is good the human made its room green, the color of healthy, growing vegetation," puts in a fern.

  "And reminds itself of Forest life with the pictures of the bird," adds the water elm.

  Our great and ponderous oak speaks too. "I see the glimmering of a noteworthy pattern here. The human ghost told Zollocco it found the stream by needing it."

  "That's true," affirms Zollocco, "I asked it how it found the stream and it said, `I needed it; then I was here' or something like that."

  "Now the human's dream depicts it stating another need," continues Our oak, "the need to flee a destructive environment."

  All of Ourself had felt this, but only the massive oak was rooted strongly enough to state it. Every entity that owns water ducts feels sad and oozes water. This biological display of sorrow that humans use We have adopted because We find it beautiful and cleansing. Our Great Self, Ipernia, who is All the beloved Forests Together, once sensed a whole world of humans oozing water. When Our Great Self Ipernia asked those long ago humans what they were doing, the humans said they wept in grief because their planet was about to die. Our Great Self Ipernia, moved by pity, invited the humans here. Only some of the humans were able to escape the dying planet in time. We, Zollocco, remember how We, Ipernia, felt at that long ago time. Our weeping has reminded Us. If the human continues to respond to Us, We will adopt it.

  "Why do the planets of humans destroy themselves?" a bewildered marigold asks.

  "Maybe they don't deserve to live!" return the gnats and the forsythia.

  And Our trees, all of Our respected trees, recite the divine law: "When any entity still wishes for its life, that life must be aided in continuing, even if extraordinary efforts from other entities are needed to nurture that life; any entity that wishes to pass through death must be allowed to pass through death."

  We all know that the human species still wishes to continue, so no more do Our different factions argue.

  "To continue my point," resumes the oak, "it seems that the human is able to act like We do; it acts according to its need."

  "But humans never know what they need. That's why they are such a confused and out-of-balance lot," trills a snake. "If this human is aware of its needs, which its stubbornness in finding water suggests, then it comes close to being a healthy creature, and We should take care to listen to its needs," says the water elm.

  "The way you talk, water elm, can't you talk regular?" complains a scaly badger.

  This hurts the water elm's feelings and Our elm weeps. We all groan. We are all feeling the stress that comes with too much excitement.

  I couldn't stay in the module hiding from bushes forever, so I took the risk, and stepped out into the warm, sweetly smelling day. I went directly to the pond, waded into the water; gorged myself with kelp; dunked myself; and climbed out of the water onto an islanded rock to nap. I figured a forsythia bush wouldn't be too likely to swim out into the middle of the pond to get me. When I awakened from my nap, I was beginning to feel hungry again. I swam to the bank, dried off, dressed, and went off to hunt. I caught sight of a rabbit eying me from under some brush. I threw the dagger I had gotten from the big ship at it, and was incredibly lucky in my aim. The knife struck the rabbit squarely in the neck, practically decapitating it. The rabbit had seemed to wait for the knife. Feeling somewhat guilty, I went to the animal and tried to explain to it why I had killed it. Skinning the rabbit was nasty. I had never done it before. I was just going to have to get used to it.

  The birds are in a dither because the human didn't get enough to eat from the rabbit and dreams about eating them. The human does have to eat though. It is irritating to have an unnatural thing among Us, but at least this human is not offensive in its manners. It walks quietly, and sometimes it sings.

  One afternoon, wandering around in the woods, I saw a cluster of bushes laden with berries. They really weren't too far from my module, and so I wondered why I hadn't seen them before. This made me uneasy. Maybe I hadn't seen the bushes before because they had just walked by that day, like the formidable forsythia. Then I realized the reason I hadn't seen the berry bushes before was that they were in a sunken, marshy section shielded from my module's view by other plants. I took off my boots, tied them to my waist, and went squishing through the foot deep mud to the bushes. The mud felt cool and pleasant on my feet, and I thought of other women putting mud masks on their faces. Were my feet getting a special cleaning treatment? A few dun-colored birds fluttered out of the bushes twittering anxiously, disturbed by my approach. The berries were a rich blue-black and shaped like enormous strawberries. Some of them were as big as my fist. Tentatively I sampled one. It was delicious! I spent the next half hour or so stuffing my shirt, held-out apron-like, and stuffing my mouth with the wonderful berries. With fingers, shirt, and mouth stained purple, I sighed happily, happily, and waded once more through the cool, sweet-smelling mud.

  As I walked through it, I became aware of a slightly alarming sensation. I felt the mud oozing up my legs. Funny, it didn't seem as though I were sinking into the mud. I looked down around my feet. I almost dropped all of the berries I had gathered. The mud, of its own accord, was creeping up my legs! I broke into a run, slipping and sliding as I raced for my module. I dumped the berries inside the module, seized a blunt knife, and frantically scraped the mud off of my legs. When I had scraped off as much as possible, I headed for the stream to wash off
the remainder. As I waded in the stream slowly the pounding of my heart subsided.

  Mirnie marsh mud is mischievous, climbing up the human's legs after it had promised not to do anything until We had warned the human in its dreams. Fortunately, the human is over its fright, and often goes to relieve the mirnie bushes of over-bearing fruit. Sometimes, even, the human wraps its long bark-colored hair in a towel and sits, otherwise nude, in the mud, allowing the mud to ooze all over it. Then it walks away, letting the mud partially dry on its skin before washing the mud off by swimming in the pool. After swimming and eating the kelp, the human lounges on the moss munching a stalk or fern it is fond of. It kills a viper, whenever it sees one, eats that, and every so often, with a skilled arm, manages to throw a knife into a feathered bird, killing the bird quickly and cleanly. The human never eats out of cans anymore, which pleases Us immensely. In feeding the human Ourself We shape and expand its personality and awareness of Ourself.

  I wonder if this is how primeval man felt, living day to day in direct dependence on the living things around him. There is one big difference, I know. Humans are social creatures, I remind myself. Sometimes I find myself clutching at this idea as if I will forget something important or miss a portion of my true nature. Early man lived in bands with other humans, amidst the splendor of his environment, but I don't live here in this splendor with other people. He would feel lonely so long estranged from his fellow people. Somehow I don't. In an odd way, I feel akin to this forest, and I don't quite know what that means, except that I feel part of it. Even though I must be continually on my guard against vipers and forsythia bushes; and even though the woods still terrify me at times with its whims, I feel a chummy, satisfied sense of belonging.

  One of the most terrifying things about this forest is that all the life in it can move. Not just the animals, birds, and some of the bushes; I have seen the moss creep off rocks; I have watched young shoots of ferns edge away from my grasping hand while more mature ferns edge within my reach. Awe struck, I have gazed upon slender trees slipping their roots from the soil and stealthily stepping to another location nearby. The forest has at times rearranged itself in such a way that I have lost my way and have spent hours trying to relocate my module. What is bizarre is that there sometimes appears to be an intention to confuse me, to get me lost, and then a seemingness to relent and shift itself no further, or even to return to a pattern of growth I can recognize and so regain my bearings. It almost seems like these are little tests forcing me to improve my sense of direction. I am in fact becoming more keenly aware of every little shift, and am very rarely disoriented.

  At night when I seal up in my module, I have second thoughts about how good I feel about this existence I have in these woods. I feel guilty about not having kept any track of time, or having not tried to calculate the difference in duration between Earth days and this world's days. I feel odd about my partial reluctance to find any people, yet I do want to find at least some people. Guiltily, I remember how I used to read a lot; a day never went by when I didn't read something. But of course here I read nothing, and I don't feel any lack. After these reflections, I give myself a shake,attribute these glum thoughts to a need for a snack, fetch out the S shaped nuts I found and roasted one day, and compromise with myself by agreeing to remember my "civilized" life each night before I go to sleep. With stomach and conscience sated, I fall off to sleep.

  Zollocco tells Us the human dreams a lot about the paraphernalia of human existence--their dishes and books and telephone--all pretty dull stuff. Sometimes when it is dreaming this stuff, Zollocco says it disappears. Its body remains, and its physical regulatory awareness remains, but its personality just disappears. Then We look around Ourself to see where its ghost has gone. Sometimes We find it in a tree, which We find very odd; sometimes We find it roaming around an area its physical self hasn't visited yet; sometimes it cuddles the fury cubs of various mammals and marsupials; and sometimes it flies through the air with the birds or the pollen. Yet, there are times when it is not among Us at all, and We will hear, days later, a report of other Forests being haunted by a graceful human ghost. There are other times when it must go very far away. We suspect sometimes it goes back to its home planet, because it returns suddenly to its slumbering body thrashing and making little sounds of distress until it wakes itself up, wondering what has disturbed it so.

  Zollocco at times talks to the ghost, and it laughingly tells about its jaunts. How it goes to mingle its consciousness with Our sun, how it has ridden along a comet's tail, and how it wanders through portions of its possible pasts and futures. It is a very talky ghost at times, and We are beginning to realize that soon it is going to need some companionship of its own kind. When We suggest that it travel to the nearby town to be with its own, the ghost diffuses, becoming a dusky blue smoke, and says it doesn't want to go. Then, strangely, We feel sadness with it. This is the first time We as an individual Forest have so completely mingled consciousness with a human. Now We feel and understand the sensation of human rejection. We are anxious to make this human remember there is no reality of rejection within the way of the Forest World. Someday, We will send Our human to Saemunsil Forest, so that Saemunsil will return it to its innocent awareness of allness.

  One day I was making a garland of flowers for my hair when I looked up to see a forsythia bush stalking me. I froze for a moment terrified, and then I scuttled up the tree under whose large fronds I had been sitting. The forsythia ran to the trunk of the tree right after me, and I escaped it with a hair's breath. The bush stood there angrily waving its pretty, yellow flowers at me. Gloating that I had I had escaped it, then worried that maybe it would just wait me out like a patient cat awaiting a vole; I angrily leaned down and pulled off some of its flowers. I ate them, I don't know why, and they tasted pretty good. So, I reached down for another handful, which I ate also, and the forsythia, not wishing to lose any more blossoms, dashed away into the forest. I felt my pupils dilate; I got the giggles up there in the tree and became very pleasantly high.

  We don't really know what to make of this. We know from their lair behavior that humans must have developed from bear type creatures, but bears don't escape up trees nor do they particularly like to sit in them, but this human sure does. Bears chase other entities up trees. Our haetrists evolved from ape type creatures, and so they like to swing and sleep in trees, and this human is behaving more like a haetrist than a bear. Well, since it is doped up, We will align with its cell memory to find out what's going on. Its cells say it was once an ape type creature. Then why won't you sleep in the woods at night, and why do you stay in your flying can lair?

  Its cells say, "Well, maybe we were bears once, too." The human is high clear down to its cells.

  "By the way," says the human body, "where can I find

  me some men? I'm horny."

  What do you mean you are horny?

  "What do you mean what do I mean? All healthy,

  fertile female creatures get lustful inclinations every so often!"

  Fertile, you are not fertile.

  "I beg your pardon, I most certainly am."

  We become part of the human's reproductive system to see if this is true. This We do with some amount of nervousness, because a misfunctioning organ makes Us feel bad. This human is perfectly healthy and functioning properly here! We are amazed. A properly working human system! Maybe Our greater Forest-World Self will be able to revive the human species after all. Each fertile human means new hope. We wonder in what adjacent world too many humans proliferate to cause a balancing shortage here.

  When I awoke, I was still up in the tree stretched out on my stomach on the limb. The night was very black and the air was fragrant and just a bit cool. There was something soft piled on the center of my back keeping me warm. As I shifted a bit to try to see what it was, it sank its claws into my flesh. I froze and the claws retracted. I tried to move again, and again the prickling sensation warned me not to do that. I laid my head back
down, rather than panic that a strange, clawed beast was on top of me. I decided it must be a dream and went to sleep.

  Zollocco reports to Us of the human's dreams. (We are pleased to call it a she now since we are assured she is not some bizarre inorganic thing out of a can.) Putting together all of his reports, this is the story We construe: Sleeping in that room with the bird decorated walls, she astral projects to other universes for fun, and also to see if there is some place else she could live because she is displeased with how her people treat themselves. She claims human beings are making her world very sick, so she wants to leave it somehow. A merchant flying can of one of Our solar system's people strays near Our universe's edge and struggles to realign the coordinates before the merchant flying can becomes trapped between the dimensions of Our universe and hers. She, Our creature, astro-projects to the flying can and realizes her opportunity, an opportunity that is impossible but is happening anyway. She returns to her slumbering body on her own planet and aligns her consciousness with the Earth (Earth. That must be the name of her planet) to get more information before she makes her decision. Our oak reminds Us that "Earth" means Lonely Hermitage in the Remembered Tongue. She learns there are many possibilities open to her. Several involve the total destruction of the life forms she knows on her planet: annihilation through global war, which takes a mere few hours; or death (and this one seems most likely) through the execution of the Forests, which brings slow starvation to all; or utter extinction of all species brought through a strange sun-caused blight. Also, the moon of the planet might explode, the pieces crashing to the planet, completely destroying the planet's tidal balances (not to mention knocking the planet out of orbit). In one case, the people try to alter the orbit of their world to make the climate more to their liking, and this mistaken effort shoots the globe off into the freezing reaches of space. There are a few possibilities of her world's continued survival, but in most of them she neither marries nor has children. The Hermitess, or Earth Wisdom--Athena--reaches out through the vortex between Our universes and takes a sprig of an olive branch from the merchant flying can and gives it to Our then Earthbound human. Athena smiles and says Our human may go to the ark if she is not afraid. Our human then feels elated; and the whole of the beautiful Lonely Hermitage, Earth, wills Our human's body and soul through the contours of space into the flying merchant can's garden.