Promised Land by Brian M. Stableford

Author:Brian M. Stableford [Stableford, Brian M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780330252676
Goodreads: 3615336
Publisher: Macmillan/Pan
Published: 1974-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

"A god?" I asked, sorely puzzled.

"Not a real god," he said. "A false one."

"The girl was a false god," I repeated, just to be sure I'd got it right. "What does that mean? I mean, does that provide an explanation for the woman's behavior?"

"I don't know," he said. Having casually let slip his revelation about what the grapevine was saying, he now couldn't see any significance to it at all.

I'd been doing far too much thinking. I gave up.

The tail end of the conversation cast doubts on all my earlier conclusions and speculations. I was no longer sure that I'd inferred correctly what he was trying to tell me. I realized that I utterly and completely failed to understand, and that I'd have to be content with that until I got another blinding flash of inspiration. Perhaps I never would. There are, it is said, certain alien races which are completely beyond human understanding. That was almost inevitable. We have limited minds. But it was a provocative thought that a species could be beyond human understanding while we were apparently well within the scope of theirs. Especially when said species was at a very primitive level indeed. What, I wondered, did that imply?

It was all too much for me to flog my mind about at the time. I gave it a rest, and was content to kick plants to pieces and study the vast tree trunks for a while. It occurred to me that I couldn't see the wood for the trees. I was too close to it all. I would have been very grateful for an incisive dialogue with Charlot to clear up my confusion.

After we'd eaten, and compensated somewhat for the gap in our stomachs, I decided to have a round of conversation with Linda, to find out exactly how much she didn't know.

"What's the crime rate among the Anacaona?" I asked her.

"There's no crime," she said. "The Anacaona are an honest people."

"Even when they're abused?"

"They're not."

"They were."

"There were no crimes. No trouble at all."

"How do you explain that?"

"It doesn't need an explanation. It's a fact. Crimes need explaining, not the absence of them."

That seemed to me to be a negative point of view, and a convenient justification of ignorance, but I didn't bother to say so.

"What's an Indris?" I asked, instead.

"An Anacaon myth."

"Do the Anacaona have a complicated mythology?"

"The wild ones do, yes. The Anacaona who have been associated with the Zodiac have lost virtually all traces of it, though. Either that or they disseminate it strictly in private."

That struck me as being a very odd point of uncertainty for someone who claimed to be an alien anthropologist. It suggested that Linda Petrosian's failure to understand the Anacaona might be as absolute as my own. She trusted their actions implicitly, but retained doubts about their inmost thoughts.

"What's the Indris myth?" I asked her.

"Indris is a plural and singular name. It was borrowed from our language as a label to apply to an individual or a group of people or things which used to be worshipped.

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