James Tiptree Jr - Love is the Plan the Plan is Death.pdf

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Love IsThe Plan The Plan Is Death
JAMES TIPTREE, JR.
"Why do mankind flatterthemselves that they alone are gifted with a spiritual and immortal principle? . . .
I am persuaded that if a peacock could speak he would boast of his soul, and would affirm that it
inhabited his magnificent tail," (Voltaire). "My first act of free will is to believe in free will," said William
James. Illusions, a Skinnerian might reply. The perfect joy, the perfect love will ensue only if one accepts
and embraces one's .destiny. I choose-because I must. This is a story of joy and love and destiny.
Remembering-Do you hear, my little red?
Hold me softly. The cold grows.
I remember:
-I am hugely black andhopeful, I bounce on six legs along the mountains in the new warm! . . . Sing
the changer, Sing the stranger! Will the changes change forever? . . . All my hums have words now.
Another change!
Eagerly I bound on sunward following the tiny thrill in the air. The forests have been shrinking again.
Then I see. It isme ! Me Myself, MOGGADEET-I have grown bigger more in the winter cold! I astonish
myself, Moggadeet -the-small!
Excitement, enticement shrilling from the sun-side of the world.I come! . . . The sun is changing again,
too. Sun is walking in the night! Sun is walking back toSummer in the warming of the light! . . . Warm is
Me Moggadeet Myself. Forget the bad-time winter.
Memory quakes me.
The Old One.
Istop ,pluck up a tree . Somuch I wanted to ask the Old One.No time.Cold. Tree goes end over end
down cliff, I watch the fat climbers tumbleout .Not hungry.
The OldOne warned me of the cold-I didn't believe him. I move on, grieving . . . OldOne told you,
The cold, the cold will hold you.Chill cold! Kill cold. In thecold I killed you.
Butit's warm now, all different.I'm Moggadeet again.
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I bound over a hill and see my brother Frim .
Atfirst I don't know him.A big black old one! I think.And in the warm, we can speak!
I surge toward him bashing trees. The big black is crouched over a ravine, peering down. Black back
has shiny ripples like-It IS Frim ! Frim-I-hunted-for, Frim -run-away!But he's so big now!Giant Frim ! A
stranger, a changer-
" Frim!"
Hedoesn't hear me; all his eye-turrets are under the trees. His end is sticking up odd like, all
atremble.What's he hunting?
" Frim!It's me, Moggadeet !"
Buthe only quivers his legs; I see his spurs pushing out. What a fool, Frim ! I remind myself how timid
he is, I try to move gently. When I getcloser I'm astonished again.I'm bigger than he is now!Changes! I
can see right over his shoulder into the ravine.
Hot yellow-green in there.A littleglade all lit with sun. I bend my eyes to see what Frim isafter :and all
astonishments blow up the world.
I see you.
I saw you.
I will always see you. Dancing in the green fire,
mytiny red star!So bright!So small!So perfect! So
fierce! I knew you-Oh yes I knew you in that first
instant, my dawnberry , my scarlet minikin .Red! A
tinybaby red one, smaller than my smallest eye. And
sobrave! -
The OldOne said it. Red is the color of love.
I see you swat at a hopper twice your size, my eyes bulge as you leap after it and go rolling, shrilling
Lililee ! Lilileee-ee!in baby wrath. Oh my mighty hunter, youdon't know someone is looking right into
your tender little love-fur!Oh yes! Palest pink itis, just brushed with rose. My jaws spurt, the world
flashes and reels.
And then Frim, poor fool, feels me behind him and rears up.
Butwhat a Frim ! His throat-sacs are ballooning purple-black,his plates are engorged like the Mother
of the storm-clouds! Glittering, rattling his spurs! His tail booms! "It's mine!" he bellows-I can hardly
understand him. He jumps straight at me!
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"Stop, Frim , stop!"I cry, dodging away bewildered.It'swarm how can Frim be wild, kill-wild?
"Brother Frim !" I call gently, soothingly.But something is badly wrong! My voice is bellowing too!
Yes, in the warm and I want only to calm him, I am full of love-but the kill-roar is rushing through me, I
too am swelling, rattling, booming!Invincible! Tocrush-to rend
Oh, I am shamed.
I came to myself in the wreckage of Frim , Frimpieces everywhere, myself is sodden with Frim .But I
did not eat him! I did not! Should I take joy in that? Did I defy the Plan?But my throat was closed.Not
because it was Frim but because of darling you.You! Where are you? The glade is empty! Oh fearful
fear, I have frightened you, you are run away! I forget Frim . I forget everything but you my heartmeat ,
my precious tiny red.
I smash trees, I uproot rocks,I tear the ravine open! Oh, where are you hiding? Suddenly I have a
new fear: Has my wild search harmed you? I force myself calm. I begin questing, circling, ever wider
over the trees, moving cloud-silent, thrusting my eyes and ears down into every glade. A new humming
fills my throat. Oooo , Oo-oo , Rum-a- looly-loo, I moan.Hunting, hunting for you.
Once I glimpse a black bigness far away and I am suddenly up at my full height, roaring. Attack the
black! Was it another brother? I would slay him, but -the stranger is already vanishing. I roar again. Noit
roars me, the new power of black. Yet deep inside, Myself- Moggadeetis watching, fearing.Attack the
black-even in the warm? Is there no safety, are we
trulylike the fatclimbers ?But at the same time it feels-oh, right!Oh, good! Sweet is the Plan. I give myself
up to seeking you, my new song longing Ooloo and Looly rum-a-loo- oo-loo.
Andyou answered! You!.
So tiny you, hidden under a leaf!Shrilling Li!Li Lililee !Trilling, thrilling-half-mocking, already
imperious. Oh, how I whirl, crash, try to look under all my feet, stop frozen in horror of squashing the
Lilild Lee!Rocking, longing, moaning Moggadeet .
Andyou came out, you did.
My adorable firemite , threatening ME!
When I see your littlest hunting claws upraised my whole gut melts, it floods me. I am all tender jelly.
Tender! Oh, tender-fierce like a Mother, I think!Isn't that how a Mother feels? My jaws are sluicing juice
thatisn't hunger-juice-I am choking, with fear of frighting you or bruising your tininess -I ache to grip and
knead you, to eat you in one gulp, in a thousand nibbles
Ohthe power of red-the Old One said it! Now I feel my special hands, my tender hands I always
carry hidden-now they come swelling out, come pushing toward my head!What?What?
My secret hands begin to knead and roll the stuffthat's dripping from my jaws.
Ali, that arouses, you, too, my redling , doesn'tit?
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Yes, yes, I feel-torment-I feel your shy excitement!How your body remembers even now our
lovedawn , our very first moments of Moggadeet-Leely . Before I knewYou- Yourself, before you knew
Me. It began then, my heartlet , ourlove-knowing began in that very first instant when your Moggadeet
stared down at you like a monster bursting. I saw how new you were, how helpless!
Yes, even while I loomed over you marvellingeven while my secret hands drew and spun your fate-,
, eventhen it came to me in pity that long ago, last year
whenI was a child, I saw other little red ones among my brothers, before our Mother drove them away.
I was only a foolish baby then; Ididn't understand. I thoughtthey'd grown strange and silly in their redness
and Mother did well to turn them out.Oh stupid Moggadeet !
But nowI saw you, my flamelet -I understood!You were only that day cast out by your Mother .
Never had you felt the terrors of a night alone in the world; youcouldn't imagine that such a monster as
Frim was hunting you.Oh my ruby nestling, my baby red! Never, I vowed it, never would I leave
you-and have I not kept that vow?Never! I, Moggadeet , I would be your Mother.
Great is the Plan, but I was greater!
All I learned of hunting in my lonely year, to drift like the air, to leap, to grip so delicately-all these
learnings became for you!Not to bruise the smallest portion of your bright body. Oh, yes! I captured you
whole in all your tiny perfection, though you sizzled and spat and fought me like the sunspark you are.
And then
And then
I began to-Oh, terror!Delight-shame! How can I speak such a beautiful secret?-the Plan took me as
a Mother guides her child and with my special hands I began to
tbegan to bind you up!
Ohyes!Oh yes! My special hands that had no use, now allunfurled and engorged and alive, never
stopping the working in the strong juice of my jawsthey began to bind you, passing over and around and
beneath you, every moment piercing me with fear and joy. I wound among your darling little limbs, into
your inmost delicate recesses, gently swathing and soothing you, winding and binding until you became a
shining jewel. Mine!
-But you responded. I know that now. We know! Oh yes, in your fierce struggles, shyly you helped
me,
alwaysat the end each strand fell sweetly into place . . . Winding you, binding you, loving Leelyloo ! . . .
How our bodies moved in our first weaving song!I , feel it even now, I melt with excitement! How I
wove the silk about you, tying each tiny limb, making you perfectly helpless. How fearlessly you gazed up
at me, your terrifying captor!You! You were never frightened, asI'm not frightened now.Isn't it strange,
my loveling ?This sweetness that floods our bodies when we yield to the Plan. Great is the Plan! Fear it,
fight ` it-but hold the sweetness yet.
Sweetly began our lovetime , when first I became your new true Mother, never to cast youout . How
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I fedyou and caressed and tended and fondled you! What a responsibility it is to be a Mother. Anxiously
I carried you furled in my secret arms, savagely I drove off all intruders, even the harmless banlings in the
grass, in fear every moment that you were stifled or crushed!
And all the warm nights long, how I cared for your helpless little body, carefully releasing each infant
limb, flexing and stretching it, cleaning every scarlet morsel of you with my giant tongue, nibbling your .
baby claws with my terrible teeth, revelling in your baby hum, pretending to devour you while you
shrieked with glee, Li! Lilili!Love- lili, Leelylee !But . : the greatest joy of all We spoke!
We spoke together, we two! We -communed, we shared,we poured ourselves one into the other.
Love, how we stammered and stumbled at the first, you in your strangeMother-tongue and I in mine!
How we blended our singing wordlessly and then with words, until more and more we came to see with
each other's eyes, to hear, to taste, to feel the world of each.f other, until I became Leelyloo and you
became Moggadeet , until finally we became together a new thing, Moggadeet-Leely , Lilliloo-Mogga ,
LiliMoggaloolydeet !
Oh love, are we the first? Have others loved with their whole selves?Oh sad thinking, that lovers before
us have left no trace. Remember us! Will you remember, my adored, though Moggadeet has spoiled
everything and the cold grows? If only I couldhear you speak once more, my red, my innocent one. You
are remembering, your body tells me you remember even now. Softly, hold me softly yet. Hear your
Moggadeet !
You told me how it was being you, yourself, tiny redling-Lilliloo .Of your Mother, your dreams, your
baby joys and fears. And I told you mine, and all my learnings in the world since the day when my own
Mother
Hear me, my heartmate ! Time runs away.
'-On the last day of my childhood my Mother called us all under her.
"Sons!S-son-n- nss!"Why did her dear voice creak so?
My brothers came in slowly, fearfully from the summer green.But I, small Moggadeet , I climb eagerly
up under the great arch of her body, seeking the golden Mother-fur. Right into her warm cave I come,
where her Mother-eyes are glowing, the cave that sheltered us so strongly all our lives, as I shelter you,
my dawn-flower.
I long to touch her, to hear her speak and sing to us again.Her Mother-fur troubles me,it is tattered and
drab . Shyly I press against one of her huge food glands. It feels dry, but a glow sparks deep in her
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