Chapter 5 third chapter

Forty-first day: "Emprodick Whirlflame" continued to go up the river slowly.No human habitat had been seen since leaving Melton Landing two days ago.The trees on both sides of the embankment are like a row of green walls; even when the river is only 30 or 40 meters narrow, the wall still stands there, almost pressing on our heads.The yellow light is as rich as liquid butter, slowly seeping in through the leaves of the eighty-meter-high trees on the brown Zhanjiang water.Sitting on the rusted tin roof of the center passenger boat, I waited nervously for the first glimpse of the Tesla tree.The old man Gadi was sitting next to me and was cutting pieces of meat. He stopped, squeezed out a mouthful of thick phlegm from his teeth, sprayed it to the side, and then laughed at me: "If you go on like this, you will definitely not touch me. To the Flaming Woods," he said, "if it was here, it wouldn't be like this near the goddamn woods. You'd have to climb up to the Wings Plateau to see Tesla. We ain't even out of the rainforest, Father. "

It rains every afternoon.To tell the truth, calling it rain would be too mild a term, for we were daily hit by torrential rains which obscured the shore and made the tin roofs of the boats pound deafeningly, making us The already slow journey against the current was even slower until we seemed to be standing still.Every afternoon, the river seemed to turn into a vertical turbulence, and if we kept going, the boat looked as if we were climbing a waterfall. The Whirling Flame was an ancient flat-bottomed tugboat, and beside it were five barges hitched like ragged children clinging to their weary mother.Three two-decker barges were loaded with bundles of goods, which were to be sold to the several farms and settlements along the river.The other two looked like housing for locals traveling up the river, but I suspected several of the occupants were permanent residents of the barges.In my own resting place, a stained rug on the floor and lizard-like insects on the wall stand out the most.

After the rain, everyone gathers on the deck to watch the evening mist rise over the chilly water.Now, the heat is unbearable and the humidity is high almost every day.Old man Gardy told me I was too late and could have been climbing in the rainforest and the flame forest before the tesla trees came alive.Just wait and see. Tonight, the mist rose, as if all the dead spirits sleeping under the dark river surface had crawled up.When the last broken cloud of the afternoon slowly dissipated over the treetops, the world regained its colors.I watched the color of the dense jungle change from chrome yellow to transparent golden yellow, then slowly fade from tawny to reddish brown, and finally become sombre.Above the Whirling Flame, old man Gardy lit the lanterns and candle balls hanging under the eaves of the second story.The black jungle seemed unwilling to be overwhelmed by the light, and began to glow with the phosphorescence of faint decay, while luminous birds and colorful spider webs could be seen fluttering on the branches in the dark above.

Tonight, Hyperion's small moon is gone, but compared to those planets that are so close to the sun according to common sense, Hyperion is moving more and more, and the night sky is frequently illuminated by meteor showers .Tonight the sky is star-studded and as we enter the expanse of the river we can see trails of brilliant meteors weaving the stars together.These images continued to burn in my eyes, and when I looked down at the river, all I saw in the black water was the same. The eastern horizon was brightly lit, and old Gaddy told me that it was the light reflected by the orbiting mirror, which was used to provide light for several large farms.

It was very warm outside, and I was too happy to go back to my cabin.Spreading a thin blanket on the roof of the cabin, I watched the heavenly light show while groups of Aboriginal families sang haunting songs, speaking slang words I had never heard before.I thought of the Bikura, and they were still thousands of miles away, and a strange anxiety came over me. Somewhere in the forest, a beast screamed like a frightened woman. Sixtieth day: Arrive at Perry Heber Plantation.I got sick. Day sixty-second: heavy sick.Fever, shaking all over.I was vomiting black bile all day yesterday.The sound of rain was deafening.Throughout the night, the clouds in the sky are illuminated by orbital reflectors.The sky seemed to be on fire.I have a bad burn.

A woman takes care of me.Help me take a bath.There's nothing to be ashamed about being sick.Her hair is darker than other natives.taciturn.The eyes are black and soft. Oh god, being sick so far from home. Day 64: she's waiting peeping running from the rain wearing a thin shirt seduce me know who i am hot all over my body shallow soft nipples black against me know who they are they're watching and here i hear their voices they bathe me with poison at night they think i don't know but i Hear their voices and the sound of rain when screaming stop and go My skin is almost gone.The redness underneath can feel the hole in my face.When I find the bullet I'll spit it out.The Lamb of God, destroy the sinners of the world, please have mercy on us, have mercy on us, have mercy on us

Day sixty-fifth: Thank you, Father, for freeing me from disability. Day sixty-six: Shaved today.Also took a shower. The administrator is about to visit, and Senfa is helping me prepare a lot of things.In my mind, the administrator should be a big man with a bad temper. I used to see this kind of person through the window in the reference room.But he was a silent black man with a slight lisp.He helped me a lot.I kept thinking that I was going to pay the people who treated me, but he assured me they wouldn't charge a cent.Even better, he'll send a man to lead me into the Highlands!He said it was the end of the season, and if I could start in ten days, we could get through the Flame Forest and reach the Great Rift before the Tesla Trees were fully active.

After he left, I sat down and talked to Senfa for a while.Three standard months earlier, her husband had died in a harvesting accident.Senfa Port Romance, her marriage to Mikel, was like salvation for her, and she decided to stay here and do some temporary work instead of going down the river and returning.I don't blame her. After a massage, I'm going to sleep.Recently I have had many dreams about my mother. ten days.I'll be ready in ten days. Seventy-fifth day: Before leaving with Tucker, I descended into the matrix of rice fields to say goodbye to Senfa.She didn't say much, but through her eyes, I saw that she was actually very sad and didn't want me to leave.I wasn't going to bless her, but I did, and kissed her forehead.Tucker stood aside, smiling, shaking his head.Then we went away, leading the two donkeys on the road.We walked down the narrow path into the golden woods, and Governor Orlandi came to the end of the road and waved to us.

God, guide us. Eighty-second day: After a week of trekking along the way, what way?After a week of trekking through the trackless yellow rainforest, and a week of tiring climbing up the steeper winged plateau, this morning we finally climbed a rock outcropping.Standing there, we can see the wide jungle, and beyond the jungle, we can even see the Bird's Beak and the Central Sea.Here, the altitude of the plateau reaches almost 3,000 meters, and the sight in front of you is spectacular.Huge rain clouds spread beneath us, reaching the foot of Wing Wing Mountain, but through the gaps in the white and gray cloud blanket, we could catch a glimpse of Zhanjiang unhurriedly spreading its tentacles, stretching out to Romantic Harbor, to the sea, to The patch of chrome-yellow forest we struggled through stretched far to the east in a tinge of purple that Tucker believed to be a matrix field of fibrous plastic near Perishib.

In the middle of the night, we continued to move forward and climb up.Tucker was worried that we might be trapped in the flame forest when the Tesla tree came alive.I tried to keep up with his pace, while pulling the donkey, which was loaded with heavy loads, and said a silent prayer in my heart, so that I would not think about pain and worry. Eighty-third day: Today, before dawn, we loaded up our gear and set off.The air smelled of smoke and ashes. The vegetation changes on the plateau here amazed me.Those weir woods and lush tea horse trees that were once ubiquitous are no longer conspicuous.We passed through a transition zone of dwarf evergreens and evergreens, and then climbed again along the dense twisted pines and cottonwoods, and finally, we came to the flame forest.There grew the characteristic tall prometheus, the root shoots of the dead phoenix, and the bulbs of the amber shimmerweed.Occasionally, we would come across insurmountable bisto trees with white fibers, which suddenly stretched across our eyes, and Tucker vividly called them "... like the rot of some dead giant, buried so shallow, determined No mistake." My guide had his own way of speaking.

We saw the first Tesla tree in the afternoon.We had been trudging for half an hour through the dusty forest vegetation, trying not to step on the new shoots of the phoenix and firewhip, which indomitably poked their bodies out of the black soil, when suddenly Tucker stopped, pointing forward. Tesla trees stand there, and we are still a kilometer away from them.The tree was at least a hundred meters high, although compared with the tallest Prometheus tree, the Tesla tree was only half that height.Near the crown of the tree, it protrudes a conspicuous onion-shaped dome, which is its gall for storing electricity.The radiating branches above the gall spread out in vines, each shining like silver or gold against the bright green-blue sky.It all made me think of some elegant Almighty Mosque in New Mecca, who had disrespectfully garlanded it with wire garlands. "We have to get ourselves and the donkey out of this ghost place quickly." Tucker snorted.He insisted on changing into flame forest equipment on the spot.We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening trudging on in filter masks and thick rubber-soled boots, wrapped in leather gamma suits and sweating profusely.The two donkeys were very nervous, and their long ears would stand up at the slightest sound.Even with the mask on, I could smell the ozone; it reminded me of the electric train I used to play with as a kid on a lazy Christmas afternoon in Villefonne-sur-Saône. Tonight we pitched our tent as close as we could to a bisto tree.Tucker showed me how to set up the circles of lightning rods that kept rattling and frightening warnings, searching for dark clouds in the night sky. I can't control so much, I have to sleep well. Eighty-fourth day: four o'clock, My Holy Mother! For three hours, we were stuck in the middle of the end of the world for three full hours. The explosion happened shortly after midnight, and at first, it was just a crash of lightning, and against our best judgment, Tucker and I sneaked our heads over the sag of our tent to watch the fireworks display.I'm used to Payson's monsoon storms in Matthew, so the first hour of this lightning show seemed nothing out of the ordinary.Only the sight of the Tesla trees in the distance, under the precise focus of the gas discharge, made me slightly frightened.But soon, the forest giants began to growl with their accumulated energy, spittle splashed, and then, just as I slowly crawled away, intending to ignore the endless sound and continue to sleep, the real Armageddon began . During the first ten seconds of the tesla tree's violent onslaught, at least a hundred bent bolts of lightning were unleashed.There was a Prometheus tree less than 30 meters away from us, and it suddenly exploded, and the burning wood scattered on the forest floor 50 meters away.Bumper poles hissed and glowed, reflecting strips of blue-and-white death that curved one after another around our little camp.Tucker screamed something, but I couldn't hear him at all against the onslaught of light and sound.A flickering piece of poinciana blazed where the donkeys were tethered, and one of the terrified animals, seemingly limping and blind, broke free and sprinted into the circle of glowing poles.At this moment, the nearest Tesla immediately sent out five or six bolts of lightning, blasting crookedly at the unfortunate creature.In that frenzied moment, I could have sworn I saw the beast's skeleton glisten in the seething flesh, and then it leaped wildly high into the air, reduced to ashes. For three hours, we watched the end of the world for a full three hours.Two lightning rods have collapsed, but eight others are still functioning.Tucker and I were huddled in the sweltering cavern of our tent, breathing masks that filtered the smoky, superheated air into cool, breathable oxygen.I would say that we survived solely because of the lack of undergrowth, and also because of Tucker, who deftly pitched our tent away from the other targets and near the sheltering bisto plants.These things, and those eight whisker alloy lightning rods, stand there, and we are only a pole away from the afterlife. "They seem to hold up well!" I yelled at Tucker, the hiss of the storm, the crackling, the thundering. "They'll last an hour, maybe two hours," my guide grumbled. "Whenever, maybe longer, and if they melt, we're done." I nodded, and took a sip of warm water through the living tube of the breathing mask.If I survive tonight, I will forever be grateful to God the Father for his generosity in allowing me to see what this night is like. Eighty-seventh day: At noon yesterday, Tucker and I walked out from the northeast corner of the flame forest, which had been burned to ashes.We came to a creek, pitched our tent quickly there, and slept for eighteen hours; three nights we hadn't slept, and two days we had been on the road through a nightmare of fire and ashes, without any trouble. No rest, now, we have to make up for it.We approached the steep ridge where the forest ended, here and there bursting with new life the carpels and cones of the various fire creatures that had died in the great fires of the previous two nights.We still have five intact lightning rods left, but Tucker and I are in no rush to test their power tonight.We got the heavy load off the surviving donkey, which died as soon as the load left him. At dawn this morning, I woke up to the sound of running water.I followed the noisy creek for a kilometer northeast, and then, suddenly, the creek dropped out of sight. Big crack!I almost forgot our destination.This morning, staggering forward in the mist, along the widening stream, jumping between wet rocks, I jumped on the last boulder, staggered, balanced myself, and looked straight down, It's a waterfall, and I'm standing on it, and it's cascading for miles, hitting the mist, the rocks, and the river below. Unlike the legendary Grand Canyon on Oldlands and the World Rift on Hebron, the Great Rift was not cut by raised plateaus.Although Hyperion has active oceans and seemingly Earth-like continents, its geological structure is in fact completely dead; it is more like Mars, Lusus, or Armaghast, which are completely There is no continental drift.Like Mars and Lusus, Hyperion's orbit around the sun has changed from circular to elliptical. Although the binary star dwarf is gone now, it still suffers from the extensive ice age, and because the orbit is long elliptical , the glacial cycle here is as long as 37 million years.The comlog compares the Great Rift to Mars' Canyon of Sailors, both of which are caused by the cycle of freezing and thawing over hundreds of millions of years and the weakening of the earth's crust, as well as the flow of underground rivers like Zhanjiang.This huge collapse, like a long scar, swept across the mountainous wings of Skyhawk Continent. Tucker followed me on the edge of the chasm.I was naked, washing the ashes off my traveling clothes and cassocks.I splashed cold water on my pale body, and laughed loudly, as Tucker's yell echoed from the north wall two-thirds of a kilometer away.Thanks to the magic of the collapse of the earth's crust, Tucker and I stood far away on a tor that hid the southern wall below us.While this monolithic cornice has been perilously exposed to wind and rain, defying gravity for millions of years, we guess it will still be there for a few hours while we bathe, relax, and shout the echoing "hello" , until we grow hoarse, and we act like kids just released from school.Tucker admitted that he had never traversed the flame forest, and had never heard of anyone crossing it this season.Now that the Tesla tree is fully alive, he said he will have to wait at least three months before going back.He seemed to have no regrets and I was happy to have him by my side. In the afternoon, we took over from each other to carry the equipment. One hundred meters behind the cornice, near the edge of the stream, we set up a tent and piled up the foam boxes of my scientific equipment. I will sort them out tomorrow morning. . It's really cold tonight.After dinner, just after sunset, I put on my thermal jacket and walked alone to the edge of a ledge where I got my first look southwest of the Great Rift.Standing on this commanding height, overlooking the river condescendingly, I will never forget that scene.Unseen waterfalls churned in the river below, and the mist rose, and the curtains shifted, and the spray from them turned the setting sun into several violet spheres, and split many rainbows in two.I watched each spectrum be born, rise up into the dimming sky, and die one by one.Cool air penetrates every crack and cave in the plateau, while warm air rushes skyward, and straight gusts pull leaves and twigs and mist, rattling in great fissures, toward The sky gradually fades away, as if the mainland itself is shouting.The voice of the stone giant, the huge bamboo flute, and the palace-sized church organ, from the sharpest soprano to the deepest bass, formed a clear and perfect tune.I thought of the flute-like wail of the wind blowing through the rocks, of the rattling and rattling of those caverns in the still crust below, of the illusion of the human voice that random harmonies could produce.But in the end, I gave up thinking and just listened to the chasm of the Great Rift singing farewell to the sun. I walked back to the tent, surrounded by a circle of bioluminescent lanterns, as the first volley of meteor showers lit up the sky overhead, and distant flame forest explosions swept across the southern and western horizons. Slight waves, like the cannons of the ancient war before the great exile. I got in the tent and tried the remote band on the comlog, but there was nothing but muted noise.I suspect that even if there were primitive communication satellites serving the fibrous plastic plantations, sending messages far to the east, these messages would be blocked by the mountains and Tesla's activity, unless the densest lasers or transluminator beams were used .In Payson, few of us in the monastery carry a personal comlog, but the data network is always there, and we can access it whenever we can.Here, however, there is no choice. I sat there, listening to the last note of the canyon wind fading to nothing, watching the flickering sky, listening to the snoring of Tucker in the bunk outside the tent, and I laughed.I thought to myself, if this is exile, then it should be considered exile. Eighty-eighth day: Tucker is dead.was killed. At sunrise, I came out of the tent and found his body.He has been sleeping outside, less than four meters away from me.He said he wished to sleep under the stars. The murderer cut his throat while he was asleep.I didn't hear the shout.However, I did have a dream: a dream that Senfa took care of me during my fever.Dreaming of cold hands touching my neck, my chest, touching the cross I've carried since I was a child.As I stood above Tucker's body, his blood seeping into the unforgiving soil of Hyperion in a wide black circle, I stared at the circle and thought that the dream was not just a dream, that the hands were really Touched me at night, I couldn't help shuddering. I admit, I reacted like a frightened old fool, not a priest.In fact, I performed the final ceremony, but panic overwhelmed me suddenly, and I left the body of my poor guide and searched desperately among the supplies, hoping to find a weapon. I took a scimitar, the thing I've used it in the rainforest, and a low pressure maser, which I intended to use for hunting small game.I don't know if I would use a weapon against a human being, even to save my own life.But panicking, I took my machete, my maser, and my powered telescope to a tall, massive rock near the Great Rift, and scoured the area for signs of the murderer.But there is no sound in the forest, except for the little tree-dwelling creatures and spider webs we saw yesterday moving gently among them.The forest looked unnaturally deep and dark.The Great Rift could provide a hundred terraces, ridges, and ledges for an entire group of barbarians, all the way to the northeast.An army can be well hidden within the crags and ancient mists there. Thirty minutes later, with fruitless vigilance and foolish cowardice, I returned to camp and collected Tucker's body for burial. It took me more than two hours to dig a grave of a suitable size in the rocky plateau land.The body was buried, the official ceremony was completed, but I couldn't think of anything personal, I didn't know what to say to this one-time guide, this funny little boor. "God, protect him," I said at last, disgusted at my own hypocrisy, and in my heart these prayers must have been addressed to myself. "Let him arrive safely. Amen." Tonight I moved my camp half a kilometer north and pitched my tent ten meters away in an open area, but with my back against a boulder, my nightgown trailing on the floor, my machete and maser close at hand.After Tucker's funeral, I checked the supplies box.The few remaining lightning rods were gone, but nothing else was taken.Immediately I wondered if someone had followed us through the Fire Forest with the intention of killing Tucker and leaving me here to the point of no return.But I cannot think of any motive for such an ingenious act.If the plantation people want to kill me, they can do it in the rain forest, or, better, from the murderer's point of view, in the depths of the flame forest, no one will have any doubts about the two charred bodies.Only Bikura remained.My original duty. I wondered if I could return from the Firewood without the poles, but quickly dismissed the idea.If you stay, you may die, if you return, you will definitely die. There are still three months to go before Tesla goes dormant.In the local area, it is 120 days, 26 hours a day.That's a long time. Father Christ, why have things happened to me?Why was my life spared last night?If they're just going to sacrifice me tonight...or tomorrow? Sitting under this black cliff, I listened to the ominous whine of the night wind blowing up from the great rift; the sky was lit up by blood-red trails of meteors, and I prayed silently. I say a prayer for myself. Ninety-fifth day: The horrors of the past week have eased considerably.I've found that even the fear fades away and, day by day, becomes normal. I cut down some small trees with a machete, and built a lean-to house. The roof and sides were covered with gamma clothes, and the gaps between the logs were covered with mud.The back wall is the solid stone wall of the boulder.I picked a few items from my survey gear and set them out, even though I figured they might never be used again. Freeze-dried food dwindled rapidly, and I searched for supplies.I drew up a ridiculous timetable on Payson a long time ago, and by now, if I followed this schedule, I should have been living with Bikura for a few weeks and already started bartering small goods for local food .It doesn't matter.I found food, the tasteless but easy to cook tea horse root, and half a dozen different kinds of berries and oversized fruit that the commlog promised were edible; so far, only one has made me sick , Let me squat all night on the edge of the nearest canyon. I paced and fidgeted within the confines of this domain, like Pelops of Armaghast, caged so dearly by those second-rate lords.One kilometer to the south and four kilometers to the west, there are flame forests everywhere.In the morning, shifting curtains of smoke and mist scramble to obscure the sky.Only the impenetrable Bisto, the rocky soil at the peak of the plateau, and the continuous steep ridge to the northeast, like armored vertebrae, blocked the way of the Tesla tree. The plateau spread out to the north, and the fifteen kilometers of undergrowth around the Great Rift became denser until it was finally blocked by a canyon that was one-third as deep and half as wide as the Great Rift.Yesterday, I arrived at the northernmost point and looked beyond the cavernous moat, feeling terribly lost.I'll try again another day, detour from the east and find a junction, but through the telltale phoenix trees across the pit, and the thick smoke hanging over the northeast horizon, I guess I'll just find a canyon full of tea horse trees , and large tracts of flame forests, these flame forests are very rough drawn on the orbital bird's-eye view map I carried. Tonight, I went to Tucker's rocky grave, and the night wind began to sing the wind's dirge.I knelt there and tried to pray, but nothing happened. Edward, nothing happened.I am empty inside, as empty as those false sarcophagi you and I unearthed in the barren desert near the Taurembe Wadi. Zen spirituality teaches that emptiness is a good sign; the opening that heralds new levels of consciousness, new insights, new experiences. Oh shit. My emptiness...is just emptiness. Ninety-sixth day: I found Bikura.Or, rather, they found me.Now I'm going to write all I can before they wake me from "sleep". At noon today, I began to carefully map, four kilometers north of the camp, and then the fog dissipated with the heat.That's when I noticed a series of terraces on the side of the rift, my side, that had been hidden by the mist until now.I was examining the terraces with my powered binoculars, which were actually a regular series of ridges, pinnacles, ledges, and tussocks, extending far above the tors, when I realized I was looking at man-made settlements .There were about a dozen huts, crude huts of tea-horse-leaf, stone, and spongy turf, but they were unmistakably human-built. I stood there, binoculars still held up, indecisive, trying to decide whether to climb down and meet the inhabitants on the exposed ledge, or return to camp, when suddenly a chill ran down my back. Crawling straight up to the neck, this feeling tells a person very clearly that he is no longer alone.I put down the binoculars and turned around slowly.There were Bikura, at least thirty of them, forming a semicircle in front of me, preventing me from retreating into the forest. I don't know what I had expected; perhaps, a naked savage with a hideous face and a necklace of teeth.Perhaps what I had been expecting was some kind of bearded, wild-haired hermit, such as travelers sometimes encounter on Hebron's Black Snake Hill.Whatever was going on in my head, the real Bikura didn't fit any of these templates. Those who approached me silently were short, none taller than my shoulders, and they were wrapped in black robes of the most crude weave, which bound them from neck to foot.When the group moved, as it did now, it looked as if they were gliding over rough terrain, like ghosts.From a distance, their features reminded me of nothing more than a group of miniature Jesuits in the isolated territory of the New Vatican. I almost giggled, but it occurred to me that this reaction might well be interpreted as panic.The Bikura showed no signs of aggression to cause such a panic; they were unarmed and their little hands were empty.Just as empty as their expressions. What they look like is hard to describe in a sentence or two.They are bald.All people are like this.The absence of a single facial hair and the baggy gowns trailing straight to the floor combined to make it difficult for me to tell who was male and who was female.Now, facing me, this group of people has more than fifty people, and they are all about the same age: between forty and fifty standard ages.Their faces are radiant, and their skin is slightly yellow. I guess this is related to their intake of trace elements in tea horse and other local plants. Others might picture Bikura's round face as the face of an innocent angel, but upon close inspection, the impression of cuteness fades and is replaced by another interpretation, the peaceful idiot.As a priest, I've spent a lot of time in backward worlds, learning about the effects of ancient genetic disorders known by various names: degenerative syndrome, congenital schizophrenia, or relics of the generation.At this moment, the overall impression left on me by these sixty or so small people, the people in black robes who were slowly approaching me, was like this: I was greeted by a group of silent children, smiling, bald, Brain dull. These, I reminded myself, were supposed to be the same "grinning kids" who slit Tucker's throat in his sleep and left him dead like a pig being slaughtered. The nearest Bikura came forward, stopped five steps away from me, and said something in a flat and monotonous voice. "Wait." After I finished speaking, I fumbled to take out my communication log and pressed the translation function. "Na Su Su Zi Ga?" asked the villain in front of me. Plugging in my earbuds, I caught the comlog's translation just in time.There is no lag in time.This obvious foreign language is a corruption of the ancient seed language, and the slang used by the natives of the plantation has similarities to it. "You are in the shape of a cross/cruciform," the comlog translated, the last noun giving me two options. "Yes," I said, and now I know these are the people who touched me the night Tucker was killed while I was still asleep.In other words, these people are the ones who killed Tucker. I am waiting.The hunting maser is in my backpack.The backpack was standing by a small tea horse tree, less than ten steps away from me.Five or six Bikura stood between me and Maeser.It doesn't matter.At that moment I knew that I would not attack a person with a weapon, even if this person had killed my guide, maybe the next second he was going to murder me.I closed my eyes and silently recited the "Confessions".When I opened my eyes, I saw more Bikuras coming.The crowd stopped moving, as if the quorum had been filled and a vote was to be taken. "Yes," I said again in the face of silence, "I belong to the cross." I heard the comlog player pronounce the last word "Suziga." Bikura nodded in unison, and then all, like well-trained altar boys, knelt, robes rustling softly, in perfect curtsy. I opened my mouth to speak, but found nothing to say.I shut up. Bikura stood up.The breeze brushed the fragile tea horse leaves, making the dull sound of twilight heat above our heads.The Bikura on the left who was closest to me came closer to me, grabbed my arm, I felt the cold, strong fingers, and he said softly, which my comlog translated into: "Come on, the Go back to the house and sleep." It was around three o'clock in the afternoon.I wonder if the comlog translates the word "sleep" correctly, could it be a vernacular or a metaphor for "death"?I nodded and followed them toward the village on the edge of the Great Rift. Now, I'm sitting in the hut, waiting.I heard the noise.Someone woke up.I sit and wait. Ninety-seventh day: Bikura called himself "Three Score and Ten." I just spent a solid twenty-six hours talking to them, observing them, taking notes while they "sleeped" for two hours at 3pm, trying to get as much as possible out of them before they slit my throat. record the data. But now I am beginning to believe that they will not harm me. Yesterday, after our "sleep" time, I spoke to them.Sometimes they don't answer questions; and when they do, the answers are not at all better than the grunts or wrong answers of some slow-witted child.他们只是在首次碰面时提出了最初的问题，给予了最初的邀请，之后，再也没人提一个问题，也没人发表一个意见。 我询问他们，又巧妙，又小心，又慎重，还带着训练有素的人种学者的专业式冷静。我询问了最简单、最实际的问题，确信通信志工作正常。它的确工作正常。但是得到的全部回答让我几乎和二十多小时之前一样懵懂无知。 最后，我身心俱疲，放弃了专业人员的精明，对着跟我坐在一起的这群人，向他们问道：“你们杀了我的同伴吗？” 我的三个对话人正埋头在一台拙劣的织布机上编织着，没人抬头看我一眼。“是，”其中一个说道，我开始把他叫做阿尔法，因为他在森林里第一个靠近我，“我们用利石割断了你同伴的喉咙，把他颠倒地拎着，静静地看着他挣扎。他命享真死。” “为什么？”过了会，我问道。我的声音听上去干巴巴的，无味的就好像一粒谷壳碎屑。 “为什么他命享真死？”阿尔法说，仍旧埋着头。“因为他的全部鲜血流光了，他停止了呼吸。” “不，”我说，“我是问，你们为什么要杀他？” 阿尔法没有回答，但是贝蒂，我猜她是女的，说不定是阿尔法的老伴，从她那台织布机上抬起头，干干脆脆地说道：“为了让他死。” "why?" 回答的绣球总是被抛回我的手中，我完全没法得到哪怕一丝的启迪。经过多次询问之后，我确定，他们杀塔克是为了让他死，他之所以死是因为他被杀了。 “死和真死有什么分别？”我问道，在这点上，我信不过通信志，也信不过我的脾气。 第三个毕库拉，德尔，发出一声呼噜声，以作回答，通信志翻译为：“你的同伴命享真死。你没有。” 最后，我失落至极，眼看就要怒火冲天了，于是我厉声喊道：“为什么没有？为什么你们不杀了我？” 三个人都停下他们手中没头没脑的编织工作，看着我说：“你无法被杀死，因为你不能死，”阿尔法说，“你不能死，因为你属于十字形，你追随十字架之道。” 我搞不明白为什么这该死的机器前一秒把十字架翻成“十字架”，后一秒又翻成了“十字形”。因为你属于十字形。 一股寒意贯穿我的全身，我突然有一股想要笑的冲动。我是不是无意中闯入了那个老掉牙的全息传说中去了，那个失落的部族，膜拜偶然闯入他们森林的“神”，然后那个可怜的杂种用剃刀还是啥玩意割断了自己的喉咙，部落的人们，看到了他们的来访者就这么死了，于是他们得以确信，并且带着些许慰藉，把他们往昔膜拜的神作为祭品献祭？ 想到塔克那苍白的脸，那皮开肉绽的伤口，这祭品是一点也不新鲜，真是好笑啊。 他们对十字架有如此的反应，表明我所遇到的这群人，是曾经的基督徒殖民地的生还者，或是天主教徒？虽然通信志中的数据坚称，四百年前坠落在高原上的登陆飞船中，载着的七十名殖民者，仅仅只有新科翁马克思主义者，所有人对古老宗教不会在意的，更别提他们是不是公然敌对的。 我琢磨着是否要撇下这个问题，如果继续追问实在是太危险了，但是我愚蠢的需求逼迫我继续下去。“你们信耶稣吗？”我问道。 他们脸上带着一副茫然的表情，不再需要口头的否认了。 “基督啊？”我再一次试了试，“耶稣·基督？基督教？天主教会？” 毫无兴趣。 “天主教？耶稣？玛丽？圣彼得？保罗？圣忒亚？” 通信志发出响声，但是这些词似乎对他们毫无意义。 “你们追随十字架吗？”为了这最后的接触，我劈头盖脑问道。 三人看着我。“我们属于十字形。”阿尔法说。 我点点头，却毫不明白。 今晚，在日落前，我睡了很短的一点时间，醒来时，大裂痕黄昏之风的风琴和笛子的音乐正好开始奏响。在这儿村里的岩脊上，那声音尤为响亮。连茅屋都仿佛加入了合唱队，往上升涌的狂风吹过石头夹缝，吹过扑啦扑啦拍打着的叶片，吹过粗糙的熏洞，鸣叫着，哀号着。 something is wrong.我头昏眼花，花了一分钟才意识到，整个村子被遗弃了。每间茅舍都空空如也。我坐在一块冰冷的大石头上，心里思忖，难道是我的出现激起了某种大逃亡？风之乐已经终了，流星开始它们每夜的表演，在低低的云层划出道道裂痕，然后我听到身后传来声响，我转过身，发现三廿又十的七十人正站在我身后。 他们一个个走过来，沉默不言地回到了茅舍中。no light.我脑中想象着他们坐在茅舍中，呆呆凝视着。 我没有立刻回到我自己的茅屋，而是在外面待了些时间。过了会，我走到长满草的暗礁边，站在石头坠向深渊的地方。一簇藤蔓和植物的根紧紧抓着悬崖峭壁，但似乎有几条几米长的藤蔓荡到了下面，悬在天堑之上。不可能有藤蔓长到足够让他们顺着爬到底下距此两千米的河边的。 但是毕库拉就是从这个方向走来的。 这一切都讲不出个头绪。我摇摇头，回到我的茅屋中。 坐在这，在通信志触显的映照下，我写下了这些，我试图想出一些防范措施，确保我能见到明天的太阳。 可是我什么主意也没有。