Sheri S. Tepper

I have in recent years often reflected upon memory. One takes it so for granted. One remembers with such facile infallibility. And one finds with such shock – at least it was a shock to me – that memory isn’t true.

This is the problem with too much Schooling. One learns to manipulate the labels in a way that the Gamesmistresses approve, and one doesn’t realize that things do not always act in accordance with the labels in the real world. One doesn’t realize that the labels, come to that, are often wrong.

Sometimes there is such crowding that there is irritation, and this makes fear or anger; and following fear comes meetings of councils to make regulations; and following regulations is further irritation at the laws that are made.

“I don’t know the sensible plant,” said Cat wonderingly. “Where may it be found?”

“It cannot be found,” the Gardener replied. “It is extinct.”

“The old ones, Ganver and the rest, they pretend it has significance. Oh, I recall that pretense, Seer. In my youth I was shown many things. ‘Watch and learn,’ they said to me. ‘Bao,’ they said to me. So I watched, but it was only nonsense. They showed me this and showed me that, but it meant nothing. It was only pretense, done to mystify us young ones and keep us subservient. The sign has no power. It is nothing. A symbol only; a symbol of our degradation.”

I have often wondered why anger is considered by some Western religions to be a sin. It is such a marvelous protection against evil.

It cheered me a little. Enmities among one’s enemies are always comforting.

One hates to think that all of existence is trivial.

We had what we thought was the answer and we troubled to look no further.

“Better late than not at all,” came a voice from the ranked multitude. “Better a tardy lover than a lonely bed.”

The tallest Father preached. He stood before us in robes of gleaming white, surrounded by the smoke of sweet incense, fondling his groin from time to time as he talked of St. Phallus. St. Phallus loomed behind the altar, erect, massive, as though ready to rape the world. It was not the first such monument I had seen. Wherever men were ignorant and hungry for power, I had seen these things, though never one as large as this. Father fondled his groin and preached.

“Holy fruit of St. Phallus,” he said.

“Clean seed planted in filthy ground,” he said.

“Corrupted by dirty woman-wombs,” he said.

“Well, why didn’t the silly Bloomians think of that?”

“Religion, I imagine, friend Chance. Religion serves to prevent thought in many cases, and I’d say it had done so here. They started with the presumption that anything as complex as the mill must exist for a good reason. Then they spent all their time inventing a good reason—and some god to be responsible for it—rather than looking for a sensible solution to their problem.”