On Paper,
Rock, And Water
By
Margaret Karmazin
The Chairman spoke to an audience of more than
two hundred million. They gathered in their homes,
dining establishments, sporting locals, and places of
work. The
farmers in the fields stood and listened to their wrist
screens; the children in their camps watched the screens
of their teachers.
Arun stopped to listen, along with his fellow
brewers, though he had been in the middle of a sensitive
mixing of ingredients. Beer brewing had never been his
choice as a profession, and he resented being forced to
engage in it, but it was his nature to do a decent job
regardless of his feelings. His brewing partner in the
factory, Josel, had so far been the originator of two
new formulas, one of which had won an honorable mention
at this year's regional contest. Arun had grown to
consider Josel almost a brother and did not want to
disappoint him or hold him back from furthering his
creations. This was something he fully sympathized with
for very personal reasons.
In his secret heart, not a day passed in which
Arun did not mourn the fact that he himself could never
create in the way he yearned to do.
The self-aggrandizing of the Chairman was, as
usual, highly irritating. He could not let pass even one
of his speeches without pounding home the forever rule
that "no citizen of this great green-and-blue world may
ever degrade and contaminate it by…" here
he would pause for dramatic effect…."engaging in the
making of art." At this last
word, the Chairman spit.
What no one knew but Arun was that each word on
this particular subject felt to him like physical stabs
in his chest.
"Apparently," said Josel, "someone has jumped
the fence again."
Josel would be proven correct, for three days
later two "atrocities against the Community" were
dragged out in front of the world and humiliated. Their
sentences were pronounced: one who was "more guilty than
the other" was to be "cancelled" by some supposedly
painless means and the other imprisoned on a lonely
moon.
Arun said to Josel. "Bashti, like many gas
giants is, I hear, loaded with moons, and many have
atmospheres. I can't imagine why they waste them on
penal colonies. You would think…"
Josel interrupted. "Think? Well, maybe those
who committed the crimes should have done some thinking
in the first place."
Arun felt a door shut somewhere inside him
against his friend. He studied Josel as he worked,
adding another mash of grain to the vat. Josel was short
for a Hareen and a pale shade of teal. This came from
his grandfather, who was a Naroc from the South. Some
Narocs, Arun had heard, were even green -- possibly a
form of camouflage from their history of living in
forests. Most
other Hareens were various shades of blue, depending on
what region their people came from; though Hareens had
not been on this planet for very long, four hundred
years at the most, and those at the time were small
groups of willing settlers.
Arun himself was a light shade of ultramarine,
and his eyes, like those of eighty percent of Hareens,
were large, slanted, and golden and fringed in thick,
black lashes. He was a physically appealing young
Hareen, more attractive than the norm, something not
always good to be, considering the potential jealousy
and reaction of the older, in command males.
Josel often punched him in the arm and kidded
about needing to keep a low profile. "You won't want
them to notice you, my friend. Remember what happened to
Locan."
Everyone remembered what happened to Locan.
Like a fool, the Hareen had directed his attentions to a
brooding female above and beyond any passably friendly
interchange when anyone with half a brain knew that only
older males were permitted such privileges. She was even
sitting on her egg sack when he reached out and touched
her arm.
"It had nothing to do with Locan's looks," Arun
said with annoyance, already in a foul mood that day. He
had not slept well the night before, the odor of the
brewing beer was giving him a headache, and… his longing
to do the forbidden was again reaching a pitch. "If the
idiot had not touched her, nothing would have happened
to him, other than a stiff scolding."
Josel quieted down, having experienced Arun's
moods before. "I'll go check gauges," he said.
Arun knew this was a small ruse in order to
take a long break, but he was glad. His frustration was
rising, and he needed to relieve it, if only
temporarily, and if only in a very unsatisfactory way.
The brewing ale filled the large vat almost to
the top and was the color of amber.
Streams of bubbles rose from the bottom,
creating intricate and, to Arun, beautiful designs.
Watching them in relative peace, considering that other
batch makers stirring their vats were close by, Arun
gently stuck his stirrer into an intersection of
bubbles. Moving the stick this way and that, he caused
the streams to form a pattern, and then quickly while
taking a huge chance, he twirled the stick and caused a
line of bubbles to take on the outline of a face.
A neighboring brewer appeared behind him and
spoke, scaring Arun so badly that he almost dropped the
stirrer, but fortunately, his sudden jerking dissolved
the face.
"What temperature have you set yours at?" asked
his fellow worker. "I'm having trouble with my current
batch -- the yeast is off. If it's not that, something
else is wrong."
Arun, heart pounding, faced his co-worker and
said, "It might be that second order of krogum. It just
didn't smell right to me."
They went on talking, but Arun did not fully
recover from his fright until he was home and behind a
locked door. And
then his intense craving returned, and he knew that he
had to satisfy it the best he could or go mad.
He turned off his devices, flipped them face
down, or covered them with dark clothing. He relocked
the door securely and stuffed a cloth under it. He
turned his two windows dark and to be safe, tacked
blankets over them. He set the door notification to Do
Not Disturb/Sleeping and checked the ceiling for
probably the thousandth time for holes, even the
tiniest.
Satisfied, he dimmed the light, moved a woven
rug aside, and lifted out a slim panel from the floor.
From a flat aperture, he removed a sheet of paper from a
roll he had stolen from his school years before. His
long, blue fingers worked as fast as a scuttling insect.
Braving self-annihilation, his entire system in high
adrenalin and with a swimming sensation in his head, he
gave in to his forbidden desires and spread the paper
out on a table.
Eyes darting about, though he was surely alone,
he returned to the hole in the floor and took out a ryada,
an ink depositing tube used by small children when
learning to write. He had stolen it from his
granduncle's farm when the uncle's female was again
brooding, and her servants were attending her instead of
minding the older children. It was red, Arun's favorite
color.
He drew feverishly, his hand flying as he
worked. He covered the paper with fantastic creatures,
some of them Hareen though with added characteristics
such as wings, strange headgear, or extra arms and eyes
in the backs of their heads. Creatures appeared that had
never lived upon this small planet the Hareens now
occupied, such as four-winged bats, hairy and horned
fantas, eight-legged sea creatures, and giant insects
with pointed heads. By second moonrise the drawing was
done, and though he had calmed down some, he longed for
one more thing and that was to have another Hareen see
what he had made. For what is art if not communication?
And if no one else sees it, creating it is surely like
screaming into space from some empty moon.
Of course, most Hareens were taught since
childhood that all is One in the Universe, that whatever
we do affects the whole of things, but as Arun grew
older, it became more and more apparent that his elders
only gave lip service to that idea.
Clearly, he thought, if anyone actually
followed the Teaching no one would stifle or hurt
another and yet probably more than half of whatever the
government did worked to this very end, to raise up some
and degrade the rest.
No one, not even Arun, knew how many drawings
or paintings or small figures of clay he had constructed
so far over his lifetime, and all of those he had
destroyed by his own hand immediately after. Though in
one case, he had let a tiny clay figure live for
two-and-a-half days before smashing it with his foot and
then stealthily let the mess fall to the ground on his
way to work. Fortunately, no one had seen this.
He knew no one else personally who was, in his
soul, an artist, though of course if there were such a
person, he would never speak of it. But the year before,
the news screens had been full of that poor Hareen from
North City who had jumped a barrier and, during second
moonrise, bomb-painted a giant face on the side of
police quarters.
Arun remembered his granduncle's reaction. His
entire family had been present to celebrate First Moon
Holiday and Granduncle had sneeringly announced the
news. Swishing his hand impudently at the wall, he
turned on the holoscreen in the grand room so everyone
could see. Several burly police were leading a sobbing
prisoner into a small space-rover. "Blascus Ruel will be
spending the rest of his probably short life on Detris,
the fifteenth moon of Boshti. He will live underground
in the dark, so it is unlikely that he will be creating
any more art."
Hearing Granduncle snicker had struck fear and
hatred into Arun's heart.
One of the young children, not yet afraid of
speaking his mind, stood up respectfully and bowed to
Granduncle. "Sir," he said, his voice high pitched and
confident, "why are people imprisoned for making art?
And what exactly is
art?"
A pregnant silence followed before Granduncle
bellowed, scaring the child so much that he teetered
backwards. "Art?
You ask what art
is? I'll tell you, young smartass! It is an abomination
akin to sexual aberrations, such as young males
believing they have rights to any female! Akin to
fornicating with animals!
Akin to defacing spiritual property or
spreading lies or embezzling credits or… he stopped. His
face was flushed a dangerous, dark blue. Arun remembered
wondering if Granduncle might foam at the mouth and keel
over dead, but no, the old Hareen was still alive, a
ripe one hundred and thirty-one. He still impregnated
females, even with their scarcity relative to males, and
the number of his offspring was legion.
"Art
(he pronounced the word with derision) is what caused
the downfall of Civilization One! It is what almost
finished off the Hareen race! Art is what stirs up
revolution, and revolution is what causes true
civilizations to crumble. War results and vast numbers
of people die. Our ancestors came here, as you have been
taught, four hundred years ago from Haradi One to
populate this world, and what happened shortly after,
children?"
Cousin Steela, who always did whatever adults
told him to do, stood up and answered in a sing-song
voice. "Haradi One got sick and caved in, and everyone
on it died."
"It did not 'cave in,'" said someone else.
"Worldwide volcanic action resulted from the weapons of
mass destruction Civilization One used, and this caused
world annihilation."
"But that is not the point," thundered
Granduncle. "The point is that unrest and revolution
were spread by artists in Civilization One, and this
new, young Hareen world could not afford to take such
risks. We were the only Hareens left in the universe, as
far as we know. If art and revolution had been allowed
to continue, we could have wiped ourselves out
entirely!"
The adults nodded in agreement, and someone
dealt the questioning child a light blow to the back of
his head. This was painful since the bony ridge there
was sensitive. He wailed in pain and humiliation.
"Anyone," finished Granduncle in a booming
voice, "who dares to engage in this sacrilege called art
deserves to die an excruciating death. But being that
Hareens are enlightened and compassionate, even in the
face of potential personal destruction, we usually send
them to lonely moons instead.
So, children, if you do not want to experience
an early death on some cold, miserable rock in space,
wipe the idea of art
out of your minds forever!"
But
since Arun had been a small child, he had known what he
was. When
small, a couple of times he had innocently produced a
drawing in the sand or scribbled on a wall with soft
stone. After the first incident, a softhearted guardian
had merely scolded him, but after the second offence, he
had been punished more severely.
Two days without food or washing and no sleep.
They had played loud music all the night, and if he
nodded off, someone poked him awake. He certainly
learned from that, but not what they had hoped. Instead,
since the urges within him did not diminish, he learned
to be devious.
He could, he discovered, draw things in the air
or with a finger inside a pocket. He could do it in scum
on the surface of water and then obliterate his work
before anyone saw. His childhood guardians had never
noticed the animals he created in his food before eating
it. Josel had never spotted a thing, though hundreds of
times Arun had created faces in the bubbling beer.
Indeed, he had kept this up for most of his life with no
one the wiser, but now he was, unfortunately,
experiencing urges to go further.
"Since art is communication," he whispered to
himself after finishing his complicated drawing, "the
communication is not finished until someone else sees
it. Someone
must see it."
Surely, he had lost his mind. How was he to
take this thing he had made past the street guards and
police, past the watchful eyes of the perpetually nosy
street cleaners? Nevertheless, the excitement grew
within him and began to override any sense he still
possessed. He was starting to feel that constantly
hiding who he was was possibly worse than risking a
short life of punishment.
In a state of questionable sanity, he rolled
the drawing into a neat tube, put on his darkest cloak,
and stuffed the tube under it.
Though second moon had risen and first moon
had sunk behind the North Mountains, it was not very
dark. But it helped that Arun’s cloak was a blackish
green and included a hood, which he pulled up over his
long head. He had no friends or close associates in
the section where he currently lived, so he did not
worry about having to stop and talk should he run into
a neighbor, and no street cleaners were in sight.
There was, he remembered, a dark place by the
canal where sometimes river craft docked for various
reasons, including shady ones. The police and
guardians occasionally gave the area a going over, but
it wasn’t one of their top priorities. It had a kind
of natural overhang to shade it made of rock and
twisted roots. It was the sort of place where Hareens
who might not be getting on in regular society met
others of their own kind for various fleeting reasons.
As Arun hurried to the water, he experienced
a war of emotions, but he pulled himself together and
set his jaw in determination since all that mattered
in the moment was to share with just one person what
he had made.
Suddenly before him was the small archway
leading to the sunken steps down to the water, and
then he was there under the overhang where two dark
figures huddled close together as they discussed some
nefarious business or other.
Arun hesitated, backing into the shadows, not
completely sure how he wanted to go about his mission.
The two Hareens had either not seen him or were
ignoring him. He found stones scattered about and
filled his pockets with them, then with another glance
at the other two, who were still deep in conversation,
he squatted down, spread the drawing out on the
ground, and laid the stones he'd collected around its
edge to hold it in place.
He couldn't resist giving his work one last
look before making a dash for the stairs
Halfway up, someone grabbed his arm, and he
almost fell. "Please, no!" he gasped, but the grip was
like steel.
"What is your name?" a deep voice growled.
Arun did not answer.
Someone else joined his attacker and pressed
his wrist screen to the side of Arun's neck. "He is
Arun ye Veedinisa, ward of Narak. A beer brewer. No
record."
Arun's mind raced. Narak was his Granduncle.
"Who are you?" he asked in desperation.
"Who do you think?" the Hareen sneered.
"Police. And it seems that you left something on the
ground back there, something most interesting."
"I-I don't know what you're talking about,"
sputtered Arun, but really, what had he expected?
They dragged him along painfully toward their
vehicle hidden in a clump of trees. "How fortunate to
have been there at that very moment," the one joked to
his companion. "Just a routine little sting on the
local degenerates, and look what we found instead … a
world-class offender! It looks like major promotions
for both of us, Edu. And the grandnephew of that
pompous ass Narak! Knock him down a bit, eh, shut his
big bragging mouth? Let's take this piece of grat in
and go celebrate. We're going to be famous!"
###
The trial followed swiftly and was a global
sensation, though afterwards Hareens who had never
before entertained thoughts of art now could not but
help but have the idea of it seep into their minds.
Each new offender just piqued their curiosity.
The Chairman himself announced the sentence:
"You, Arun ye Veedinisa, grandnephew of Neendrah ye
Narak, the Director of District Quoan, are sentenced
to life imprisonment on the Moon Veriz, sixty-fourth
of the gas giant Boshti where you will live out your
days alone, without friends, relations, or offspring,
with no one to communicate with and no hand to ever
touch you for now and ever. An implant to monitor your
vitals will be installed into your arm, which will
inform us when you have expired. We don't imagine that
you will last long after your supplies run out, given
to you from the generosity of our great government,
which you have so callously shamed."
The Chairman slammed down his ceremonial
dlikta and the sound reverberated far and wide.
Arun was permitted one last contact with a
family member or friend, and he chose Josel, but his
old friend and co-brewer refused the contact. His
granduncle, now humiliated, was out of the question.
The authorities wasted little time and quickly clamped
Arun into the wall of a fyton transport and blasted
him off to Boshti and the chosen moon, one of many
equipped with an atmosphere.
The tiny planetoid had a desert climate,
cliffs, and dark caves. His guards unceremoniously
pushed him out of the transport, one literally kicking
him in the rear, until he fell on his face and rolled
down a small hill. "Here, grat!" shouted this guard as
he flung after him two colossal, stuffed bags, which
crashed into Arun at the bottom. "Your supplies!"
"Until they run out," laughed the other
guard. "You had better learn how to live off the
environment. It's either that or starve."
Arun managed to gather his wits to ask one
final question. "Are there other prisoners on here?"
"Not yet, grat," said the guard. "Not so many
people stupid enough to do what you did." And with
that, he and his associate disappeared back into the
transport and slid the door shut loudly. They were
gone before Arun had time to stand up and brush
himself off.
His arm smarted from where they had inserted
the monitoring implant without bothering to numb it
first. Well, that was the least of his worries. He
looked around now for some kind of shelter and saw
mainly scrub brush and hills. The sun was smaller in
the sky than on Haradi II, but he was not especially
cold. Being dessert though, he knew at night it would
be freezing.
The gas giant loomed in the sky, an
intimidating sight though he had seen holos of the
different planets and some moons in the system when a
child. But experiencing this in reality was
terrifying. He dropped to the ground and sobbed. A
wave of horror and regret passed over him; he had been
incredibly stupid and cavalier, and look where it had
gotten him. He would never see another soul again
unless they brought another prisoner, and if they did,
it might be a murderer instead of a political
offender. But by then Arun would most likely be dead,
with that chip broadcasting the news to his jailers
who would gleefully announce it to the world.
A small animal darted past, then stopped a
safe distance away to observe him. He wiped his eyes
and looked. It was the size of a gibbel at home,
scaled in the front of its body with thick fur in the
back and ending in a bare tail with a tuff at the end.
Its face was snub-nosed, cute even, though Arun could
see teeth sticking out over its closed mouth. Was it
carnivorous? If so, what did it eat?
As if in answer to his question, the thing
suddenly stiffened and stared at something behind
Arun. His system pumping madly, Arun whirled around to
see a smaller creature similar to the first one,
though fatter and squattier. The first creature shot
past Arun as if he were invisible, attacked the
smaller creature, and ripped its throat open.
"Predator and prey," Arun said to himself.
"Now I know which is which."
He set about the exhausting task of rolling
the two giant bags across a small plain to the hills
beyond in search of shelter.
###
It took all his wits to survive. He realized
how pampered his life had been until now. Before this,
he had never had to consider or wonder how things
other then beer were made. But he surprised himself
with his ingenuity and used what they had given him to
create meager comforts in his small cave. He made fire
using dry brush and later strange, twisted wood from
some kind of tumbling plant. He found water after
following the two different animals, which he had
simply christened "Eaters" and "Meals." He made
friends with one of the "Eaters" and occasionally, it
slept in his cave. One day, about two-thirds into his
supplies, he clubbed a "Meal," roasted and ate it.
From having watched what this animal ate, he made a
salad of some of the brush and greased it from
drippings. It was bitter and horrible at first, but he
soon got used to it. He found orange and yellow fruits
on succulent plants, tested them by setting them out
for the "Meals" to eat, and then dared to try them
himself. A bit bitter, but edible. More than two at
time and he would suffer for it, but if he regulated
the amount, he was all right.
Settled in and no longer living in continuous
terror, he explored. The friendly Eater accompanied
him. They walked over a long rise, and what he saw
astounded him. A canyon was below, surrounded by cliff
walls, and Arun's first thought was:
these are made for art.
Arun named the almost ever-present Eater
"Geeto" and, as his supplies dwindled, hunted with
him. He transplanted several edible plants into a
garden outside his cave and worked out an irrigation
system. It did not rain but he found underground water
and ways to bring it to the surface. One day, he
crushed soft rocks until he found certain ones that
made yellow, red-brown and blue pigments. Adding fat
from the remains of "Meals" to the crushed rocks, he
produced paint. He secured the tail and ear tufts of
"Meals" to the straightest sticks he could find to
create brushes and one day, with Geeto at his side,
walked down into the canyon and chose a wall.
"Go hunt," he told his pet, but at first the
animal stayed where he was and watched. Without a
doubt it had never seen art being created and for that
matter, neither had Arun in this particular fashion.
With the small sun over his left shoulder and the gas
giant to the right, Arun forgot where he was as he
fell into a pleasant trance and painted like someone
gone wild. Fantastic figures, including Hareens of
legend, animals of Haradi II, Eaters and Meals, and
beings who had no name. He painted until sunset, until
his stomachs contracted in hunger, and the air grew
cold.
There were no other Hareens, nor anyone else
for that matter, to view Arun's now daily work, but he
remembered the Teachings of his people, how the
Universe was One.
Somehow this thought seemed more fathomable
now.e
###
Was it simply enough to produce art if no other
sentient creature other than himself laid eyes upon it?
If the Universe was itself conscious, would it not "see"
the work and wouldn't that be greater than any other
observer?
Sometime while Arun had been feverishly
working, Geeto had captured five Meals, which he kindly laid out for his new
friend's inspection. Arun grabbed them up and
contentedly said, "Good work, Geeto. Let's go home."
He had never felt so satisfied in his life.
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