Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 by The Book Of The River (v1.1) Page B

women over there worship the river, as
though it's a God."
                 "Out of despair at their lot, presumably."
                 "Maybe,"
he went on, "it is a God. In the
sense of a very powerful, though rather torpid being. Or perhaps a being which
has other, more interesting things to think about than us. . . ." He
leaned against the guard-rail, surveying the landscape around Verrino.
"Fertile place, isn't it, our habitable zone? With a desert barrier
bordering all of it, and precipices to seal off one end, and the wild ocean
the other end. Rather like," and he smiled, "an ant colony in a very
long trough. How illuminating it might be to watch how two separate ant
colonies developed, supposing they were separated by a glass wall midway . . .
Granting, of course, the vast difference between ants and humans."
                 "What
are you getting at?" I asked him.
                 "Just
that, if there's a God—or Goddess—around, she doesn't seem particularly worried
whether her worshippers are burned alive . . . But maybe if she interfered,
that would break the rules of her game?" Yosef hesitated. "And of
course, if there were a higher being involved, humans could hardly hope to
understand it—or perhaps even to prove that it was a higher being. No more than an ant can hope to understand a
man, however much time it spends crawling along him from head to foot. In which
case, our particular tragedy would be to suspect that this was so—because an ant could never suspect anything of the sort in a
million years."
                 Hasso
looked impatient, and tried to interrupt.
                 Yosef
simply raised his voice. "Yes, we would be conscious of the existence of a
mystery—whenever we bothered to pay attention to it—without ever being able to
solve it. Rather like the mystery of the whole universe of space and stars,
itself. Why is it? How is it? We're in it, and of it; and
so we've no idea. Perhaps if we could solve the mystery of the river, the
mystery of existence might well come next?"
                 "One
thing at a time, for goodness sake!" broke in Hasso. "It's the other
shore we're exploring."
                 "And
why is there another shore, so very separated from us? I do sometimes wonder
whether there can be men, who act as Gods to other men—without scruple?"
                 "You
mean those Sons of Adam? That Brotherhood?"
                 "No, not at all. I was wondering: is the black current
entirely natural?"
                 I
just had to laugh. None of these men had any concept of the sheer scope of the
river. It might well be a creature, or at least part of one, a tendril—its
spine or bloodstream or whatever—but that it could be a made thing? Oh no.
                 The
old imp smiled at me, unoffended, and bobbed his head. "Quite!" he
cried. "Quite! You're right to be amused. Far, far better that the river
is an alien goddess, than the handiwork of men like Gods. Or
of women like Gods."
                 And
so we went below to the refectory, for a breakfast of boiled eggs, bread and
hot spiced milk.
                 "Perhaps
Yosef's right," said Hasso, intercepting me on my way to the head of the
stairs. "I'm going out to the glassworks and grindery today. Want to
come?"
                 "Why
there?"
                 "The
first helmet worked a treat, didn't it? So it's only sensible to have another
one on hand. Just in case."
                 "Maybe
Yosef was right about what?" I asked him.
                 "About
women like Gods . . . Supposing that was so, mightn't some wise old
guildmistress have an inkling of the truth?"
                 So
she might. If. And supposing. But recalling my initiation on board the Ruby
Piglet, I suspected not. Unless the boatmistress of the Ruby Piglet knew little and cared less.
. . .