“She is ugly,” said the boy’s sister. “Her body is white.”
“Is she a good slave?” asked the boy of Hassan.
“She is a stupid, miserable girl,” said Hassan, “who must be often beaten.”
“Too bad,” said the boy.
“Tend the verr,” said his sister, unpleasantly.
“If you were mine,” said the boy to Alyena, “I would tolerate no nonsense from you. I would make you be a perfect slave.”
“Yes, Master,” said Alyena, stripped before him, her teeth gritted.
“You may clothe yourself,” said the boy.
“Thank you, Master,” said Alyena. She pulled up her skirt and drew on her blouse, adjusted her cloak and hood. Whereas she could dismount from the kaiila blanket, which served her as saddle, she could not, unaided, reach its back. I, with my left band under her foot, lifted her to her place. “The little beast!” whispered Alyena to me, in English. I smiled.
“Have you seen, or heard, aught, young warrior,” asked Hassan, “of a tower of steel?”
The boy looked at him and laughed. “Your slave, Raider,” said he, indicating the irritated Alyena, now again mounted, well vexed, on her kaiila, “apparently makes your tea too strong.”
Hassan nodded his head, graciously. “My thanks, young warrior,” said he.
We then left the boy, and his sister, and their verr. She was scolding him about the verr. “Be quiet,” he told her, “or I will sell you to raiders from Red Rock.
In a year or two you will be pretty enough for a collar.” He then skipped away as she, shouting abuse, flung a rock after him. When we looked back again they were prodding their verr, leading them, doubtless, away from their camp. On our kaiila harness, we knew, we wore no bells.
“The oasis of the Battle of Red Rock,” said Hassan to me, “is one of the few outpost oases maintained by the Aretai. To its west and south is mostly Kavar country.”
At noon of the next day, I cried out, “There is the oasis.”
“No,” said Hassan.
I could see the buildings, whitish, with domes, the palms, the gardens, the high, circling walls of red clay.
I blinked. This seemed to me no illusion. “Can you not see it?” I asked Hassan, the others.
“I see it!” said Alyena.
“We, too, see it,” said Hassan, “but it is not there.”
“You speak in riddles, “ I said.
“It is a mirage,” said he.
I looked again. It seemed to me unlikely that this was a mirage. I was familiar with two sorts of mirages on the desert, of the sort which might be, and often were, seen by normal individuals under normal circumstances, not the mirages of the dehydrated body, the sun-crazed brain, not private hallucinatory images. The most common sort of mirage is simply the interpretation of heat waves, shimmering on, the desert, as the ripples in water, as in a lake or pond. When the sky is reflected in this rising, heated air, the mirage is even more striking, because then the surface of the “lake,” reflecting the sky, seems blue, and, thus, even more waterlike. A second common sort of mirage, more private than the first, but quite normal, is the interpretation of a mixed terrain, usually rocks and scrub brush, mixed with rising heat waves, as an oasis with water, palms and buildings. Perception is a quite complicated business, involving the playing of energies on the sensors, and the transduction of this energy into an interpreted visual world. All we are in physical contact with, of course, is the energy applied to the sensors. These physical energies are quite different from the “human world” of our experience, replete with color, sound and light. There is, of course, a topological congruence between the world of physics and the world of experience. Evolution has selected for such a congruence. Our experiential world, though quite unlike the world of physics, is well coordinated with it. If it were not we could not move our physical bodies conveniently among physical objects, manage to put our hands on things we wished to touch, and so on. Different sensory systems, as in various types of organisms, mean different experiential worlds. Each of these, however, the world of the man, the cuttlefish, the butterfly, the ant, the sleen, the Priest-King is congruent, though perhaps in unusual ways, with the presumably singular, unique physical world. Beyond this, perception is largely a matter of interpreting a flood of cues, or coded bits, out of which we construct a unified, coherent, harmonious world. Though the eye is a necessary condition for seeing, one does not, so to speak, “see” with the eye, but, oddly enough, with the brain. If the optic nerve, or, indeed, certain areas of the brain, could be appropriately stimulated one could have visual experiences without the use of eyes. Similarly, if the eye were in perfect condition, but the visual centers of the brain were defective, one could not “see.” Perhaps it is more correct to speak of a system of components necessary for visual experience, but, even if so, it is well to understand that what impinges upon the eyes are not visual realities but electromagnetic radiations. Further, what one sees is a function not simply of what exists in the external world, but of a number of other factors as well, for example, what one has familiarly seen before, what one expects to see, what others claim is there to be seen, what one wants to see, the physical condition of the organism, its conditioning and socialization, the conceptual and linguistic categories available to the organism, and so on. It is thus not unusual that, in a desert situation, a calm, normal person may, misinterpreting physical cues, make an oasis, complete with buildings and trees, out of energies reflected over a heated surface from rock and brush. There is nothing unusual in this sort of thing.
But this did not seem to me a mirage sort of experience. I rubbed my eyes. I changed the position of my head. I closed and opened my eyes.
“No,” I said. “I see an oasis clearly.”
“It is not there,” said Hassan.
“Does the oasis of the Battle of Red Rock have, at its northeast rim, a kasbah, with four towers?”
“Yes,” said Hassan.
“Then I see it,” I said.
“No,” said Hassan.
“There are palm groves, five of them,” I said.
“Yes.” he said.
“Pomegranate orchards lie at the east of the oasis.” I said. “Gardens lie inward. There is even a pond, between two of the groves of date palms.”
“True,” said Hassan.
“There is Red Rock,” I said.
“No.” said Hassan.
“I could not imagine these things,” I said. “I have never been to Red Rock.
Look. There is a single gate in the kasbah, facing us. On the towers two flags fly.”
Petitions,” said Hassan, “of the Tashid and Aretai.”
“I shall race you to the oasis,” I said.
“It is not there,” he said. “We shall not arrive there until tomorrow, past noon.”
“I see it!” I protested.
“I shall speak clearly,” said Hassan. “You see it and you do not see it.”
“I am glad,” I said, “that you have chosen to speak clearly. Had you spoken obscurely I might not have understood.”
“Ride ahead,” suggested Hassan.
I shrugged, and kicked the kaiila in the flanks, urging downward, from the sloping hill, toward the oasis. I had ridden for no more than five Ehn when the oasis vanished. I reined in the kaiila. Before me was nothing but the desert.
I was sweating. I was hot. Before me was nothing but the desert.
“It is an interesting phenomenon, is it not?” asked Hassan, when he, and the others, had joined me. “The oasis, which is some seventy pasangs distant, is reflected in the mirror of air above it, and then again reflected downward and away, at an angle.”
“It is like mirrors?” I asked.
“Precisely,” said Hassan, “with layers of air the glass. A triangle of reflected light is formed. Red Rock, more than seventy pasangs away, is seen, in its image, here.”
“It is only then an optical illusion?’’ I asked.
“Yes,” said Hassan.
“But did it not seem real to you?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said.
“How did you know it was not Red Rock?” I asked.
“I am of the Tahari,” he said.
“Did it look different to you?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Then how could you tell?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I am of the Tahari,” he said.
“But how could you tell?” I asked.
“By distances and times,” he said. “We had not come far enough, nor at our pace, fast enough, for it to be Red Rock.”
“Seeing it,” I said, “one who was unwise, and not of the Tahari, might ration water unwisely, and die.”
“In the Tahari,” said Hassan, “it is well to be of the Tahari, if one would live.”
“I will try to be of the Tahari,” I said.
“I will help you,” said Hassan.
It was the next day, at the eleventh Ahn, one Ahn past the Gorean noon, that we arrived at the Oasis of Red Rock.
It was dominated by the kasbah of its pasha, Turem a’Din, commander of the local Tashid clans, on its rim to the northeast. There were five palm groves. At the east of the oasis lay pomegranate orchards. Toward its lower parts, in its center, were the gardens. Between two of the groves of date palms there was a large pool. The kasbah contained a single gate. On the summits of its four towers flew petitions, those of the Tashid and Aretai.
