“But he did not die,” she said. “He is reborn from the crack in the shell.”

  Blank looked. The body lay on what he now saw was an enormous tortoise shell. The vapor might have come up through the crack. “But—”

  “Now he has joined you, without displacing your own spirit,” she continued. “And you are heir to all that is his.”

  “But I sought nothing from him!” he protested. “I was trying to do a selfless act.”

  “You succeeded. You have given him your good young body. You receive all that is his. Including his name. I welcome you back to youth, Sky River.”

  “But I am not—”

  “How is it, then, that you understand me, when I am speaking the tongue you did not know before and my hands are still?”

  It was true. He understood her perfectly. He realized that what he had taken to be a vapor was the spirit of Sky River. It was spreading through him, adding its nature to his. Now he saw or remembered Sweet Grass as she had been when he told her the great ancient truths of the night sky, and received her foolish yet wonderful declaration of love. His gifted or recovered name derived from the sky he interpreted: the great milky river that crossed it every night, forever changing orientation and aspect, but constant throughout. “But you as a child—that was ten summers ago!” he exclaimed, feeling his dawning or returning love for the precious girl.

  “Indeed it was,” she agreed. “I think you have not gazed upon me lately.” She flung off the feather cloak and stood revealed as the lustrous young woman she had become. “You are heir also to my love. Now I can marry you, Sky River, for you are young enough.” She stepped into his embrace. “And you will be chief.”

  He would be chief. That was just part of the favor she was returning. But she had had to wait for her change of age—and his. He held her, savoring the realization of the whole of it. He had thought it could not be, until the good-hearted young warrior had come. The one who sought no reward, knowing nothing of the true relation between the sky and the world, or of the special conventions of this tribe.

  “Now do you believe in the First Father’s rebirth from the cracked shell of the tortoise?” Sweet Grass inquired mischievously.

  “Now I believe,” he agreed. “Now I am whole.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  This is a new story, really a fable, but it is based on what may be the oldest story in the world. When mankind came to the Western Hemisphere perhaps twelve thousand years ago, much changed. He encountered a massive wall of ice, and then the geography of a new set of continents, and new animals and plants. He hunted many of the larger creatures to extinction and had to adjust his lifestyle. He learned to forage widely, and then to grow his own food. He settled and developed villages and then cities. He became literate. He developed the world’s most accurate calendar. But through it all one thing never changed, except in its own special recurring ways: the sky. The patterns of the constellations were there every night—the same ones he had seen in the Old World. And so the old myths persisted, for their truth alone was unchanging.

  One of these was the story of the First Father’s annual rebirth from the cracked shell of a tortoise, symbolizing the harvest cycle. When maize (corn) was developed from a wild Mexican grass and became overwhelmingly important as a staple food, he became the god of maize. This myth is recorded on a Mayan stela dating to 3114 B.C.E., more than five thousand years ago. But the myth itself predates maize, going back as far as twenty thousand years—to the time when mankind was still in Asia. The Great Turtle or Tortoise may stem from the night sky of that time, when man tried to make sense of the enormously complicated world his sophisticated mind perceived. It remained because it could be verified at almost any time, at almost any place in the world. Today we call its constellation Orion’s Belt: the three bright stars highlighting the back of the tortoise shell, next to the place of creation, beside the enormous sky river we now call the Milky Way. The significance of that tortoise shell is still understood by the surviving Maya of today. It is part of a larger framework of myth that relates the stellar patterning of the night sky to the features of ordinary experience.

  So my story, whose geographic and temporal and cultural details are fuzzy, represents a reenactment of a kind of a most ancient myth, with the old man named after that greatest of all rivers, and the priest’s daughter named after the increasingly important crop: sweet grass, or maize. Because it is a story, reality and fantasy comfortably intertwine. Perhaps the old man really was a god, testing the young candidate’s power of body and spirit, and rewarding him with all he had ever desired. Or maybe the girl knew Blank’s language, and chose to speak it only when she decided to recognize in him a spirit worthy of the title of Sky River. It does not matter. To the Maya, and surely to other peoples, astronomy was part of cultural reality; the image of the stars was the truth of human relations. A person who did not accept this was denying reality.

  Where and when might such an episode have occurred? In the Americas in the past twelve thousand years.

  1995

  Bluebeard

  I stepped into my Interact identity. It was Females Day on the Zone, meaning that there would be no charges of any kind for female players in certain games. That meant no permanent record, and that was just as important to a girl as the money.

  I zeroed in on the ad I had heard about next to the Junior Miss Games section. Maybe that was just coincidence, or maybe the game sponsors figured that today’s junior was tomorrow’s adult, so they were cultivating a future market. Naturally such a game would be fascinating to a child of any age. It was obviously based on a fairy tale, though of course the details would be changed, to make it a worthwhile challenge.

  There it was: “BlueBeard.” I felt the tingle of spine that such a notion evokes in a girl. Bluebeard was a rich noble who married seven women in turn. When he took business trips, he told them they could go anywhere in the castle except one room. Of course each wife sneaked a peek at the forbidden chamber—and spied the bodies of her predecessors. Until Wife #7 managed to escape and expose the rascal. It was a story stronger in mystery than in sense. Nobody ever missed those other six wives? What about the stench of their corpses? Why didn’t Bluebeard hide the bodies where they couldn’t be so readily found? So there would be a forbidden chamber in the game, but no dead wives; it had to be something else. And there was the fascination: what was in there? The only way to find out was to play the game.

  I moved my electronic marker to knock on the castle door. A panel opened, showing a grim face. “Go away!” it said sociably, and the panel started to close.

  “But I came to play!” I protested, my spoken words appearing as print along the bottom of the screen. If I changed my mind, I could edit them out before I spoke again. Of course I didn’t do that. No girl would, at this stage.

  The grim face scowled. “You are too young. You look like a ten year old child. You can’t marry Bluebeard until you are at least eighteen.” The panel started to close again.

  “I’m at least eighteen!” I cried hastily. “I’m—I’m using my little sister Nettie’s membership. She said it’s all right. Since this is Females’ Day, I won’t be running up any charges on her account.”

  “You should get your own account, registered in your name and age,” the face said. “Come back when you do. There’ll be another Females’ Day next month.”

  “But this is my only day off!” I protested frantically. “I’ll be too busy then. And why get a whole membership when I won’t be playing much anyway? Why should you care whose name it’s in, since it’s free today anyway?”

  He stared at my emulation figure. “Eighteen—in a ten year old persona. It’s highly irregular—”

  “But people do it all the time, don’t they?” I pleaded. “Just let me in, and I won’t say a thing. I just want to play the game.”

  He finally relented. “You swear you are eighteen or over? That you are adult, and qualified to play an adult game? And you know that this is an adult game?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” I agreed eagerly, answering each question, as any girl of ten would.

  “Then enter, Nettie,” he said, and the heavy oaken door swung slowly inward to reveal the dark interior hall.

  I entered, relieved that they had accepted my word instead of doing the thorough verification of my identity the law required. The one that would have shown that there was only one child in my family, so there couldn’t be any older sister. The stats were on record from the original application for membership in Interact, the worldwide electronic entertainment network. But maybe they didn’t care, since the charge meter was turned off; there would be no permanent record of this transaction. Females’ Day was really a way to get more women into what had been a mostly male dominion. Monthly free samples to get new folk hooked, so they would become game addicts and be willing to pay endlessly for the privilege. Some games were extremely expensive, but those who were hooked had no choice except to pay. Why worry if they were underaged, any more than the erstwhile tobacco companies had worried about the targets of their advertising? Soon enough they would be of age, and addicted to the special thrills of electronic entertainment. In fact, maybe the tobacco companies owned electronic stock, since they knew so well how to nudge around and under and through the law. Free samples were seldom truly free; they were more like trial doses of heroin. I knew that—which was why I was here.

  A maid met me in the anteroom. She held up a wedding dress. She looked doubtfully at me. “Are you of age to marry?” she asked. “Because—”

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “This is my little sister’s persona, because I’m on her card. Just make the dress fit.” Though I was surprised to encounter marriage; there had been no warning of this. Still, how could the Bluebeard scenario be played out without a wife? So it did make sense, on reflection.

  She put the wedding dress on me, and it did fit my small persona, because it was a one-size-fits-all costume. Computer simulations in virtual reality are handy that way; no fancy re-stitching is needed. She set a tiara in my hair and showed me the mirror. I was now a lovely young (very young!) bride.

  Music played as an inner door opened. I stepped through, and there was an aisle down the center of a chapel. At the far end was the altar with a priest, and beside it stood a portly man with a massive blue beard. I was about to marry Bluebeard! I might have been daunted, as any girl would be, but reminded myself that the game was not reality; no ceremony was binding beyond the confines of the game itself. So I marched down the aisle, thrilling to the swell of the wedding march, a melody I had always liked.

  I reached the altar, and the priest mumbled some words, and Bluebeard put a golden ring on my finger. By this time I was identifying completely with my persona, so the scene seemed real; suspension of disbelief becomes easier with practice. Then he kissed me, and I had to clamp down on my reactions lest I go into freakout mode. I mean, the groom does kiss the bride, doesn’t he? Even if the groom has the universe’s bushiest Technicolor beard and the bride’s a ten year old girl. So I got through it, mainly by closing my eyes and pretending I was sucking on the world’s fuzziest giant peach.

  He took my hand and led me through another portal. Now we were in the castle bedroom, with fancy draperies at the stone windows and an enormous four poster bed. Oops—were we supposed to consummate the marriage? I really hadn’t considered that detail. In the fairy tale book they always sort of slide over that sort of thing. Any girl would be wondering whether it was better to quit the game now, while she was ahead, so to speak. I hesitated.

  Fortunately Bluebeard ignored the bed. “Wife, I have to make a business trip,” he said gruffly. “Here are all the keys to the castle.” He held up a huge ring. “You may go anywhere you choose, with one exception. Do not enter the chamber that this little key unlocks.” He selected the smallest of all the keys. “Promise me you will not enter that one room.”

  Ah, we were getting into it! “I promise,” I said, wondering what would have happened if I had refused to promise. Would the game have shorted out right there? That forbidden chamber was the whole point of it, after all.

  “Good. I shall return in a fortnight.” He handed me the keys, and tromped out of the bedroom door. In a moment the castle shook as he slammed the great outer portal. I looked out the window and saw his huge blue charger galloping away. He had effectively been written out of the game. I had two weeks to myself.

  Naturally the first thing I did was head for the forbidden room. There were servants cleaning the halls and making beds, just as in a hotel. They were figments of the game’s imagination, and I ignored them.

  The forbidden door was easy to recognize. It had a big placard on it saying FORBIDDEN CHAMBER—DO NOT ENTER. So I put the key in its lock, and tried to turn it. It resisted.

  The placard changed. ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE OF AGE? it printed at me.

  “I’m using Nettie’s card,” I explained again. “I’m actually at least eighteen.”

  ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS? YOU GAVE YOUR WORD.

  I hesitated. This was actually the third time the game had challenged my age or motive. Apparently they were really serious about keeping children out. Yet all they had to do was run a routine check on my membership, a process requiring perhaps all of two seconds, and bounce me out of the game when I couldn’t document my age. So it seemed clear that they really didn’t care. This was all window dressing.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” I said. I twisted the key again, and this time it turned. I heard the crude tumblers moving, unlocking the door.

  The chamber was bare. The walls were not stone, but mirror glass, making it seem much larger than it was. There was only a chest the size and shape of a coffin lying in its center, reflected endlessly in the walls. This was the big secret?

  I stepped inside—and the door slammed closed behind me. Oops—I had left the key in the lock. Now it and all the other keys on the ring were out of my reach. And the door had no handle inside. I had stupidly locked myself in. I would surely lose a point for that.

  Of course I wasn’t really confined. I could exit the game any time simply by lifting my real hands and removing the electronic helmet that brought me the sounds and sights of Interact. My gloves and socks were only to track my movements in the game; they didn’t interfere with my real actions. But then I would default, and never find out what the big secret was. No curious girl would want that. I didn’t care about winning the game; I just wanted to fathom its mystery.

  So I walked my persona to the coffin and pulled on the handle on its lid. The lid swung up and back, forming a padded horizontal table. And in the depths of the coffin lay a handsome naked human man. No pointed elven ears, no vampire fangs, no nothing supernatural. There was no doubt of this, because everything was laid out to view.

  “You’re it?” I asked, disappointed.

  “Aren’t I enough?” He sat up, then lifted himself out of the coffin. He turned to bend over it, presenting me with his small bare masculine buns, and hauled the base up so that it snapped into a continuation of the padded table.

  “That depends,” I said. “You must be something really special, to be Forbidden.”

  “Of course I’m special,” he said. “I have remarkable lust and stamina. Get that dress off and I’ll demonstrate.”

  I realized that I was still in the wedding dress. “Uh, you’re naked,” I said somewhat belatedly.

  “Indeed. Get naked yourself, and lie on this altar of erotic expression. You and I are about to have a memorable experience.” He touched his genital, which lengthened.

  I backed away, not easy with this. “I think I don’t want to play anymore,” I said.

  The man fixed me with a disconcerting stare. “I think you will play my game, girl. You may call me Lucifer.” His genital expanded ominously.

  This was definitely alarming. I lifted my hands to the helmet, as any girl would. The helmet didn’t show in the game, but the gesture was unmistakable.

  “Listen, girl,” he said. “You have forsworn yourself three times to reach this chamber. You claimed to be at least eighteen, when in fact you are only ten. The arrangement by which you entered this game has no validity, because of those misrepresentations. If you quit now, you will be charged with the crime of illicit entry. A penalty fee will be assigned, and you will be arraigned for disciplinary proceedings. Not only will your family be impoverished by the assessment, you yourself may be removed from what is obviously an unsuitable home and assigned to a reform school for an indefinite period. Are you sure you want to let yourself in for that?”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded as any girl would be. I did not speak, but neither did I continue my motion toward the helmet.

  “You thought you couldn’t get in trouble when no fees were charged?” he inquired rhetorically. “That no fees meant no records? Girl, those records are there regardless. They just aren’t publicized. We can produce three game scenes showing your persona swearing that you are what you are not. You lied, girl, committing perjury, and thereby criminalized yourself. The law is now your enemy.”

  I found my voice. “But I only wanted to—”

  “To go where you knew you were forbidden to go. To do what was forbidden. And you did. Now you are locked into your situation as surely as your persona is locked in this chamber. You can hardly claim you weren’t warned.”

  I began to cry, as any girl would. “Please, I didn’t mean any harm! I was just curious. Let me go, and I’ll never tell.”

  Lucifer smiled. “Now we are making progress. I shall be glad to let you go, and to guarantee that no news of this is ever bruited about. Your secret is safe with me. If.” He looked meaningfully at me.

  I tried twice before I got the question out. “If—if what?”

  “If you remove that dress and lie on this bed. There is no need for any of this to be unpleasant. Indeed, you should enjoy it.”