Admission

By Robert Wilton

“I know you for heroic wisdom, Joseph of the Elm,” says Tubal of the Gate, and surely I can’t be condemned for a furtive pulse of pride; it’s been true enough, hasn’t it? “We have always looked to you for the truth.” I’m keeping my head lowered; to return his gaze, let alone to seek the expressions of the others, would be unforgivable. “We have talked here for hours. Tell us what is right.”

I shall tell them what is right, of course. Haven’t I always?

I hold my head down a moment longer. I consider the earth between my feet; always a good discipline. Slowly, against my will almost, my head rises: the cumbersome burden of all that wisdom, perhaps.

Young Layla, who has as yet not established what she is of — Layla of the Excessively Desirable Mother would be most apt, but I’m sure that something more suitable will emerge over the next few years — looks at me warily. She’s not sure if she’s supposed to invite me to speak.

She’s a good kid; thoughtful, and fast learning. Help her out. “Tubal of the Gate,” I begin, “I know you for respect and kindness.” Neither, I suspect, is true. But what he said was meant to sound respectful and kind. “If your various ideas help me towards a little wisdom I shall gladly offer it.”

All of the eyes in our circle are closed as I speak; as anyone speaks. No trick of persuasion or appeal shall distract us. Deprived of the reaction in their eyes, one naturally speaks with more restraint, more calm.

Still, I know they are anxious to hear my verdict. “But for now I must remain silent.”

Is there the faintest murmur of frustration? What I said was proper, and expected. Tubal spoke as he did to put me on the spot, the calculating little sod. I ducked his challenge, I observed the propriety, and I think I saw a few nods of approval at my dignity. But also frustration: we really do have a problem; we are desperate for the right answer.

Layla only turned thirteen recently — I remember her birth; Gods, I remember her mother’s birth — and it’s her first time as our lodestone. In time the phrases will become glib, but for now, she holds fast to the instructions on the screen in her hand.

She’s checking them now; we wait.

In time, I suspect, her mother’s fine bones will push through that adolescent face and Layla will become irresistibly charismatic. Intelligence is so much more persuasive to hear when it’s beautiful, and beauty is so much more appropriate to enjoy when it’s intelligent. Long after I’ll be past enjoying it all, I fear.

Self-conscious, she turns to whomever is next in the circle. “What says the sky?”

We all close our eyes.

“The sky…” — Petar of the Guest is sincerely thinking; it can make him tedious, but I appreciate his precision — “the sky is indifferent. The fact that these people would live among us rather than a hundred miles away or a thousand has negligible impact on the sky.”

Very properly, Layla waits for any comment on this. There is none; easy enough.

“What says the water?”

“The water is attentive to this request we make of it,” says Ima of the Frost, “but unconcerned. Having these extra people in our community will require a little more water, and will create a little more for the water to carry away. But as long as we have our sensible systems for gathering and protecting and managing the water, the water will be generous.” The sensible answer, elegantly put. Ima of the Frost must be…what, ten years younger than I? I remember her adolescent self, studious and serious even then.

“What says the earth?”

Silence. I — like others — glance round to see who’s next in the circle.

It’s Meti of the Spring. I don’t know much about him. I used to pride myself on knowing everyone; but there are more of them now, and fewer brain cells. I think it’s Meti of the Spring. Whoever it is, he’s uncomfortable. It’s trickier to speak for the earth on a subject like this, and he’s worried about seeming stupid or being challenged. So many of our protocols are designed to overcome the former and soften the latter, but we’ve never successfully dealt with the human instinct to insecurity.

“The earth…” — even with my eyes closed I can tell how hard he’s struggling with the thoughts — “the earth is kind of in a similar position to the water.” This doesn’t sound right, but he shall be allowed to finish. “I mean, obviously there’ll be some impact on the earth. Like with the water.” Young Meti desperately wants some of Ima’s clarity. “Space, of course; and, er…extra burden. Over-cultivation’s always a risk. But no…that is — it’s like with the water — if we’re sensible the earth will be generous.” Racing to the end of the sentence with those borrowed words, Meti of the Spring gasps in a breath. I fear he has not fully understood the hydrological cycle.

“I know you for sincerity, Meti of the Spring.” The irritation in the tone only reinforces the benefit of our ritual courtesy. I’m trying to see who it is. Up until quite recently this sort of distance wasn’t a problem for my eyes. “But the nutrition and resilience of the soil aren’t endless.” What was the name of Mira’s boy? Tan, was it? Tau? “And besides…” Our eyes are closed, but we can hear the frustration, and feel the clenched teeth. Not Mira, Mina; dead a decade now, surely. “If we’ve worked the soil a season it feels — it feels damn painful — to–”

Someone sensible coughs loudly. Older eyes glance at each other. And some of the younger, aware of the danger. Poor Layla, our solitary lodestone in the center, is wishing she had a gentler introduction to the Council. Being the beneficiary of our wisdom can be a tricky business. Whatever-his-name-is is biting down his passion, aware that he’s treading a sensitive line. I wish I could make out his face properly; see if he was trying deliberately to push the point.

“I know you for your passionate commitment to our community, Tal of the Dew.” It’s Ima; trust her for tact. “Fairly and openly you express something that many in our community feel. All of us must give full weight to this.” We know this issue as painful and perennial; the uncomfortable theology of the human relationship with the earth. Throughout history, humans sought to soothe their insecurity by claiming ownership of the soil they stood on and built on. There was a natural instinct to claim ownership of what one had sweated to cultivate; and an ugly instinct to claim the minerals that one found. The latter instinct exploded out of control in the twentieth century and came to its inevitable self-destructive climax back in the twenty-first. We’ve never really got over the former.

“And by your dignified restraint you recognize that our duties must be wider than our feelings, however natural.”

We know we will never solve it, not presented so bluntly. So we must slow ourselves, speak more carefully, more courteously, and feel for the places where we can make progress instead.

As my eyes open, Ima of the Frost catches them — and holds the gaze a moment longer. She knows I have the credibility, the weight of virtue, to flex my muscles a little and push the right answer. She knows the debate is getting close to the point where that is necessary.

Young Layla is hurriedly consulting her screen.

“What says the collective?” she says, a little shrill in her haste, and I hear the intakes of breath from several directions. We knew this was next; and we know how it will go.

Silence. A few glances.

Oh Gods… Dear old Aris of the Stream. “Oh!” Aris of the Stream says at last. “Is it–? Shall I just–? Yes. Well now, the — er — the collective, yes? The collective…” I am glad to close my eyes. Perhaps death will take me, or at least sleep, while he finishes a sentence. “We have to take the collective seriously, don’t we?” Dear Aris — my old comrade, my old friend — still finds the protocols so hard, after fifty years. Another pause. “The collective is the thing, isn’t it? Greater than the sum of the parts. I rather think…”

It is one of our great challenges: that the stupid have equal rights, and therefore may in some sense be equally right.

But today we are struggling to be patient. “I know you for humanity, Aris of the Stream,” someone says — nice way of putting it; humanity to a fault — “and the collective is precisely the problem now. Admitting so many new members to our community would change the balance of the collective too unpredictably.”

A man I seem to remember I suspected of stealing tools from me, years ago, knows Aris for his kindness, and reminds us that kindness to the vulnerable has always been a fundamental principle for our community; as rhetoric goes, it’s deft if rather cheap.

I notice half a dozen glances in my direction. Begging me to answer the discussion. Begging me, at least, to put Aris of the Stream out of his misery.

So many have gone. Most — all, is it now? — of my contemporaries. Some were lucky, and died a physical death — quick or slow — before their mental death came upon them. With others, we saw their focus becoming ever narrower, and grounded in some ever more distant past. We heard regret, and bitterness, and prejudice, and in the end pure ignorance.

Someone knows Aris for his enduring service to our community and reminds us that the essence of our community has been survival, and that means shrewd defense above all.

Someone else knows Aris for his caution — a little too close to the bone, that one — but reckons that it’s a logical impossibility for the collective to have a view on a significant change in the nature of the collective.

I remember my first time… as — as executioner, if you like. The first time was unconscious; a sincere sympathy. An old man — his name was…what was his name now? — whom I liked; whom I’d always respected. And he’d got so forgetful and at last there was a meeting of the Council when his confusion and flailing were distressing to see, as well as being inconvenient and irritating. I only visited him to ask if he was all right, and did he need anything? And I merely hinted, by way of explanation, at how he’d seemed.

And to my great relief whoever it was wasn’t offended, but actually smiled; grateful almost. And excused himself from the next Council, and the next, and so drifted gently into silence; and his interests were heard in the voice of the collective, and in his decline he was respected and cared for instead of being a problem. And one of the other elders of the time — and don’t ask me her name either, she’s gone these twenty years — complimented me on my skill in helping the man on his way. And the next time I did it more consciously. And though I was never the only one to have such conversations, increasingly I was recognized in the role, and the implications of the visit from me were understood. Sometimes there was anger and resistance, sometimes tears; the vanities, the bogus certainties, collapsing at last. More often there was the gratitude.

Rather too brutal to visit Aris immediately. But it won’t be long. And he’ll surely be one of the grateful. He’ll feel the burden lifting. Rightly, he will believe that the collective will represent him faithfully and wisely, and the young will bring him food and listen to his tales, and he won’t have to worry anymore.

Not, perhaps, the most pleasant of skills; but obviously I feel the sense of power in it.

There she is. I’ve been looking for her, when I’ve not quite been able to hear and my mind has wandered. Layla’s mother: Zana of the Sorrows.

By chance, she sees me; catches my eye for a moment, considers me. She must be…forty now? Strong bones, flaming hair, bold gaze. A respectful regard, as she looks at me; and also a woman’s regard.

Our deliberations have got stuck in the mud again, and to her great relief, Layla finds on her screen the possibility of a break for refreshment.

We each take a moment to check the ingredients of what we’re drinking. Let me acknowledge: clay nurtured in the western stream; the gathering of the clay by the children of Izael of the Daisy; the shaping and firing of the cup by Izael; the decoration by Izael’s wife, Rona of the Blade, who despite years of trying still has less artistic gift than a walrus but was the only person who ever took the trouble to try this kind of decoration; water pulled up by… I don’t know — I acknowledge you, whoever you are; lemons grown by Hamid of the Engine; sugar traded in by Elza of the Wolf; mint found and picked by… what is her name? I acknowledge whatsername, the rather stocky girl who stuns me every time I see her with the echo of a tumble in a field I enjoyed…more than half a century ago; all prepared today by Hans of the Oil.

So I acknowledge; so I appreciate.

A few of today’s Council mill around, and stretch their legs. Poor Aris sits with his eyes closed, pretending to meditate but just hoping no one tries to talk to him. Ima of the Frost glides past me, pauses, looks into my eyes a long moment, rests her fingers on my arm and then glides on, but the look lingers in my eyes and the delicate energy of the fingers: drawing strength or giving strength; shared feeling; entreaty, and warmth; the mutual enjoyment of our greater wisdom, the subtle potency of the older.

We are forbidden to discuss today’s matter outside the protocols. But it lurks there in the faces, the frustration and the angry glances from people like Tan… Tal; their reluctance or their ill-suppressed energy when Layla tries to summon us back.

We are forbidden to discuss it carelessly: a lesson we have learned — over decades; actually it’s centuries now, isn’t it? — through a grim natural selection that has condemned whole communities to destruction by hasty error or dumb bad luck. A jumped-to conclusion will more likely be destructive to the problem, and will certainly be destructive to the cohesion of our community.

Everyone has sat. Again, I see the glances in my direction. They expect their answer soon.

Someone has given me a biscuit.

I understand that there was an hysteria in the early twenty-first century about the accelerating power of Artificial Intelligence, its decision-making evolving ever faster. Most humans panicked and hid in stories of irrational optimism or inescapable destruction. Among scientists, most competed to find ways either to think faster than the machines or to be able to defeat the machines.

What very few realized was the secret power that humans had been cultivating for millennia. Not our notoriously well-developed brains, with their capacity for machine-like rapid thought. In the end, our greatest strength turned out to be our evolving capacity for slower thought.

I wonder who gave me the biscuit.

Perhaps there is no right answer to the request of this large group of migrants to be admitted to our community. Perhaps, like many of the great puzzles of geo-strategy or ecology, it is simply too complex for one simple solution. Perhaps, like so many questions in the history of human community, it touches too many individual emotions too differently for one mutually-satisfactory solution. In such circumstances, the effort at a solution becomes a fight for personal interest, practical or psychological; and this can only be destructive for the community.

Young Layla has not had time to enjoy a lemonade, but she’s revised the next stage of the protocols and now gazes with precocious confidence at whoever’s next in the circle.

“What would a god say?”

“A god would say… that they — these people — that they bring… er, possibility. They bring talent. Freshness.”

“What would a devil say?”

“A devil would say that they bring uncertainty, disease, and sedition.”

So we slow. By chance, the technologies and habits we developed through and for our faster processing of ideas — printing, computers, institutions of education and public communication — helped to slow our decisions about those ideas. Perhaps we do not come to a conclusion about the migrants today. But we will happen across smaller aspects of the issue that we can decide. And the community will be stronger in the process; we will know each other and our community even better. We will have shown greater respect to the migrants and to ourselves.

As it happens, on this issue I’m sure that I have a strong line to take. At the right moment, phrased in the right way, it will serve as a solution. And Joseph of the Elm will have served the community as ever.

Time and more to enjoy the biscuit first. Let me acknowledge: flour probably traded in by Elza of the Wolf; perhaps sugar likewise; butter from Tristan of the Spark and his family milking their cows and churning; baked by Sal of the Cog, I guess; nuts I think, and I don’t know if they’re traded in or harvested by whatsername; is that a herb or some–?

A cough spasms and barks in my throat, I’m choking and lurching and trying to clutch at my windpipe but my hands are full and I’m trying to hold the lemonade to my lips but nothing seems to match up and –

Someone thumps my back; someone holds the glass to my lips, and the treacherous crumb is gone and I sip free and breathe and settle.

So I acknowledge; so I appreciate.

Concerned glances in my direction. Layla looking startled — a little cross — at the interruption.

“How does the god reply to the devil?”

“The god… the god says that to be counseled by uncertainty is to be counseled by fear and…”

Perhaps the poor kid was wondering if my cough was a way of getting attention. Someone’s probably told her — unofficial protocol — to call on me sooner rather than later.

What was the phrase Tubal used? Heroic wisdom, was it? Rather good, that. Wisdom of course, after so many years, so much life. And there is a heroism — in the solitude of this wisdom; being right even when I cannot make everyone happy.

Gods, but it’s a wearying solitude.

And an ironic heroism. We did not win; nor lose. Neither conform nor resist. We opted out of that world, simply and totally. People fighting over a dwindling resource were doomed inevitably: for as long as the resource endured, someone would emerge to challenge for it. All but one of these was doomed to lose and starve. By definition, only the last became the winner — and by definition only because the resource was exhausted. Hollow victory; hollow stomach.

Long before this, the others had sought to play a different game in a different place. The disenchanted and the dispossessed, the outsiders, the exiles, the losers and the freaks. Not the people with answers but the people with questions, questions stronger than the old answers. They — the ancestors of our communities — they withdrew from the doomed world to the margins: to the forests, the deserts, the borderlands; to unfashionable journals and hidden websites; to poetry, to fantasy, to narcotic hallucination. In such places, we began to find… if not answers, at least more productive ways to ask the questions.

A voice suddenly. Are they asking me–? No; the devil is answering the god.

We slowed. We asked questions more successfully. We were triumphantly not necessarily right.

The human superpower is humility.

“…so simple,” someone is pretending, “one of our foundational principles is that space and essential food and medicine and other necessities are shared equally and according to necessity.” Everything else is luxury, and one is allowed to seek whatever luxury one wants. Whoever-it-is is enjoying the luxury of a pause for rhetorical effect; we feel it even with eyes closed. “So admitting this group must inevitably affect…”

Strange how there’s less interest in competing for luxury when there’s no competing for the essentials.

“…balanced by new strength and productivity and we’ll be able to trade in…”

Is it really just me left, from my generation? Just me to uphold those principles; to point the way?

“… perhaps identifying the more specific challenges that we need to find individual solutions for? Land space. Shelter. Food. Also…”

There’s old Aris, of course, but he’s effectively gone already; he’ll soon be free of all his worry, and we shall be free of his foolishness — and even the stupid have their particular vanities and certainties. The splendid Ima of the Frost is half a generation behind me. My true contemporaries… long gone. So many dignified visits I made; so many respectful painful conversations. So many old voices were silenced.

I can see the ground between my feet. Earth pounded flat; hard.

I’m slumped. Let’s remember our posture, Joseph of the Elm.

“…think we’re on the right track. I would very much like to know the names of these migrants; just something of their story. It’s not right that I judge their future without them having any individual char-…”

Everything has been pounded flat and hard. My generation fought in ways these youngsters will never imagine. The rather charmless Tubal; even the very charming Zana — what can they know of our battles to survive, and to shape the survival that they now enjoy?

“…this a good moment to consider our resolutions?” Young Layla, eyes on her screen and feeling her way very cautiously. I look up from the exhausted earth; eyes are open to follow the directions from the lodestone. “Even if we cannot yet articulate a decision,” — did she glance at me there? — “perhaps we can summarize some… some resolutions of principle. Is there any objection to this?”

Principle? We have forgotten too many principles. Ideas — values — beyond the imagination of these children. This is why they need me. They don’t realize it, when they look to me for the solution, but this is why they are right to do so. On this life-pounded hardness of mine, these new generations will be able to stand firm.

You young people, you just don’t realize…

I hear their voices, offering principles and agreeing with them. The justified emotions of those who have worked the soil. Knowing our insecurities, and giving them their proper value. Giving personalities to the migrants, and thus remembering our own humanity. All sensible stuff, no doubt.

The solution will come more smoothly, when finally they call on me.

The voices wash over me. Should I be focusing on the answer, or should I trust that it will as ever come instinctively? That I shall be right by right?

It is such a worry, this! Don’t you realize the burden?

Ima of the Frost is looking at me. What is that expression? Respect, no doubt. She has the intelligence to understand. She feels sympathy for my burden; a wise girl, Ima.

Not so much younger than I, surely. Did she and I ever–? No, surely I would remember it.

Still: a handsome pleasing girl then; a handsome pleasing girl now.

Of course I shall be right. I shall be right because I have not forgotten who we are, where we came from; I have not forgotten the things that matter.

I may be getting old, but a woman like Ima still looks at me and finds plenty to admire. And in her gaze I still feel the thrill of attractive company, of stimulation physical as well as intellectual. A visit from Ima… We’re both a little too dignified for anything sordid, no doubt, but the conversation could still be flirtatious — and in its way passionate — and so rather glorious.

Someone coughs. Was Layla looking at me? No — No, I don’t think so.

The murmuring continues.

What is that down there, to the right of my foot? A flicker of brightness against the dull earth.

An insect, perhaps. No.

A blade of grass, surely. Barely the tip.

Doesn’t any of them understand what it’s like? Have they forgotten our values so easily?

Grass. Grass in a meadow, a face beneath me and flesh around me, a lifetime ago.

To Ima again. And again, mercifully, she is looking at me. She understands. Sympathy, no doubt, and…

Ah, the pleasure of a visit from a handsome intelligent woman… A passionate equal. The contentment of our mutual fittedness, our enduring charms. The reassurance of her respect and understanding.

What is that expression of hers? That… troubled warmth?

Is that… pity? No! The thought howls nauseous in my gut. Gods, when will the wretched girl let me speak? I have things to say and I am fed up with these postures, this pretending to care what stupid inexperienced people think. Let me remind you of what you have forgotten, let me give you the truth, and let’s be done with it.

And then, perhaps today even, Ima might pop around. A drink; mutual ease; a sedate intelligent discussion. Our certainties; our wisdom.

I’m gazing at the ground again. The bruised impression of so many years of pressure; no prospect of grass. Posture, Joseph.

“By rediscovering our resolution, by re-forging our principles in the crucible of community and the heat of reality” — Layla is reading this bit — “we have defied complacency and re-asserted our humanity.”

A visit from Ima…

The visit.

Immediately, instinctively, I am staring around the Council. What do they see? What do they intend?

The visit I have made so many times.

No! Not me. Not yet… I have wisdom yet unspent. I have truths you people have not heard. Our community is a triumph of endurance, and I am the icon of that endurance.

Ima would do it well. It would be humane. It would be dignified. It would be fitting.

I have something left to say, surely! No, you have not heard the last of me…

Is that really a bit of grass, sticking out of this earth? Unlikely.

And yet I think it is. When the Council has broken up, and the grass feels a bit of breeze, finds a drop of moisture left somewhere in this battered ground…

Young Layla is double-checking something on her screen.

Even if it is not, it could be. Tomorrow, perhaps. Out of this dead, blackened, beaten bitter earth. I cannot see it; perhaps I will not. But I must believe in the possibility of that blade of grass.

At last.

“Joseph of the Elm,” begins Layla, and her voice has something of awe, “are you — have you anything to say? Will you tell us what is right?”

“I think…” — my voice does not sound as it should; I sit up properly, I will be heard properly — “that is, I have concluded — that I… that I might be wrong.