“Okay, Sandra and Sandra. It not only searches out the records we need, it can also identify which other evidence to look for. Our township was within the original Elizabeth Town patent. Then Daniel Peirce and some other men bought the southern half for Wood Bridge, and Peirce sold the southern third of that to some settlers, who called it Piscataqua. But it turned out that there was already a small settlement in the township: a band of shipwrecked Dutch sailors who had made their way inland from Point Ambo. They took the oath of allegiance required by the proprietors and for a quit-rent of a half-penny the acre, each received in return…” Shaw flipped through the sheaf of printouts until he found the one he wanted. “…each received homelots of five morgens—that’s ten acres—plus sixty acres of upland and six of meadow for haying. Then—here it is—in lieu of the standard proprietor’s seventh, ‘the wyld Woode south and east of ye east Kill of Runamuchy Creek shall be set aside as Commons for such Activityes as byrding and fyshing and trapping of smalle Animals.’” Shaw handed the page to Rann, who pretended to read it. He studied the signatories at the bottom of the page, blurred a bit by the scanning and reproduction and the age of the original document. There was Daniel Peirce’s name ‘for ye proprietors’ and the seal of Governor Carteret. Below that the twenty four freeholders granted domain by right of prior settlement. “Benken van Kottespool, captain,” he read. “Ronholf vander Alkrenn, navigator. Giszberth and Alengonda Hengenwaller…” He read the remainder silently. Shipwrecked sailors, far from home.
Sandra mentioned that the Dutch had colonized the area before the English had taken it in one of the Anglo-Dutch wars. “Afterward, New York claimed all of East Jersey as part of New Amsterdam, ’til the Duke of York himself smacked them upside the head.”
Rann said, “That is all very interesting, but…”
“But,” Shaw said, “the point is that the prohibition on disturbing the woods long predates the construction of these homes here.” He swept his arm around. “The woods aren’t undeveloped because our properties encircle it. Our properties encircle it because the woods can’t be developed. There was a mention in an early conveyance—Vander Alkrenn to Jeremy Pike—that the land was a Lenape burial ground and that Lenapes who so desired would have easement along the creek to visit it, but the original charter makes no mention of that.”
Rann said, “I suppose I ought to get back to my digging…”
“Well, now, that’s the funny thing,” said Shaw. “The digging. Normally, a quit-rent buys back freeholder rights, like the right to hunt or to explore for minerals and so forth. Most freeholders back then ignored the quit-rent because they never supposed that fox hunts would cross their croplands or that the proprietor would sell someone else the right to dig for gold. Why buy back a right that no one else is likely to exercise? But the Dutch sailors paid their quit-rents dutifully every year and when they eventually sold out and moved away, they put a no-digging encumbrance on the conveyances. All but this one.”
Rann said, “This one.”
“Yes, your deed is the only instrument that permits digging—and always has.”
“How about that?” Rann murmured.
“You don’t fool me, Rann,” said Jamie Shaw. “You must have done your homework, and the township inspector, too. You knew none of your neighbors could legally stop you. But why did they exempt only this one property?”
“Just in case,” Rann suggested, “we might want to exhume an Indian.”
Shortly after, Rann made a show of giving up and bringing in a professional excavator with a bigger backhoe. The man was named Steve and he looked over the smaller rental unit that Rann had been using as a wolf might study a poodle. They went over the plans together and Steve checked the GPS markers. “Ya done the survey good,” he admitted, “but maybe ya should stick to that, steada tryin’ to shave some bucks on labor.”
The inspector came by and the three of them reviewed certificates together. Afterwards, when Rann offered refreshments inside, Steve surprised him by studying the photograph of the Martian sinkhole and saying he wouldn’t mind climbing down into the opening of the cavern, just to see what was there.
“If it is a cavern,” Rann suggested, “and not just a play of shadows.”
“Nah, it’s a cavern, I tell ya. If this was the moon, I’d say ya might be right. No air makes the shadows real black. But Mars got air. Not much, maybe, but some. And, ya know, this sounds real whacko, but that sinkhole looks like it mighta been excavated.”
“A swimming pool on Mars?” offered the inspector with a laugh.
“Nah. Too deep. Say, how big is this thing, anyway?”
Rann said, “About one hundred and thirty meters deep.”
The inspector whistled. “A forty-three story building could sit in there.”
Steve took up his gloves and pulled them onto his hands before sparing the photograph another look-over. “That would be some honking foundation to dig, I tell ya.”
A few days later, Venkaaszbuul came to the house. Rann held the door open for him. “Come in, captain. I’ve been expecting you.” They did not shake hands.
Venkaaszbuul ignored the sinkhole picture and, brushing past Rann, went directly to the living room, where he sat with his back to the photograph of the Vela supernova. “We have not been in contact for decades, navigator,” he said, “and yet you were expecting me?”
Rann shrugged. “Call it Fate.”
“I’ll call it Death. Jizzvarth has died.”
Rann felt a tear track his cheek. “Jizz?”
“Yes, of your Ypuralon comrades, the last. I thought you would desire the knowing of it.” He spoke in chegk, the language of the lowlands.
Rann buried his face in his hands. “Oh, the hills! Oh, the hills! And only I alone to remember them the now!”
Venkaaszbuul managed to convey distaste on his expressionless face. It was in the eyes, and very subtle; but the Chegka were a subtle folk. Rann had to remind himself that they, too, felt grief, though they showed it in different ways than his own highland folk.
“It was a natural death,” Venkaaszbuul assured him, “and no autopsy was called for.”
A sob escaped Rann’s throat, and he knew shame before his captain that he had allowed it. “Is that a comfort? Am I to forget that he was of our lives a part, of our crew a part? Or how he struggled in the lifeboats safely to debark us? You are a cold man, flatlander.”
“And you a forgetful one, hillman. Or do you recall why your beloved countryman bore the shepherding of us into the boats?”
Curiously, the jab calmed Rann, proving that it was possible, on some topics at least, to weep oneself dry. “Sometimes,” he said, “there are days when I do not.” He hugged himself. “I am sorry for the error.”
“Sorry, you are,” the captain said. “Sorry.”
“A small transposition error…”
“From flaws the smallest, great failures burst. Their philosopher Aristotle said this.”
“It was too late to correct…”
“Of course it was. Hillmen may weep their sorrows on their sleeves; but the universe is cold and has no pity. ‘There are in nature no second chances.’” The proverb was chegk, but he delivered it in a thick puralon accent, the sort of accent Chegka used for a laugh in their night clubs.
Rann said in a low and miserable voice, “How long must I answer for it?”
“For all your life,” the captain said. “For every heartbeat of it since we were marooned in this miserable place. But…”—And here the captain’s voice took on something close to pity—“it is Rann who has the demanding of the answers from you. The Americans have a proverb: Don’t cry over spilt milk. So don’t.”
Rann attempted a smile, and failed. “What, then? Should we cry over milk held safely in containers upright? Not long past have I bespoken a counselor regarding my melancholy. These people must know some secret to assuage the pain when it grows too great. While there, I knocked a cup of tea over.”
The
captain sucked in his breath and said, “Ah,” but did not otherwise change expression.
“And this counselor said that she would wipe it up, and that would be the end of it. Wipe it up! And try to pretend that we never saw anything.”
Venkaaszbuul said, “It is their response to everything. They ignore the truths before their own eyes.”
“Or they lock it in, like flatlanders.”
“Were you of the School, you would learn to weep in your heart, not on your sleeve; but you would not learn not to weep. We can pass among them without much remark, while you and Jizz and the others, they looked on askance, more emotional than their women. A terrible lacking was it, that the Schoolmen failed the winning of the hills.”
Tears coursed down Rann’s cheeks. A million worlds had died a-borning in that failure. He wept for a moment for all the things that might have been; but he detested the bottled-up flatlanders, and so it was only for a moment that he wept at their failure. “She thought that by wiping it from the table, she could wipe it from our minds. It was only some spilled tea, and so a small sorrow; but her reaction was typical. They are heartless, these humans. No wonder they kill one another, fight endless wars, and never developed their technology. They are too rational. Not about anything do they care!”
The captain touched him briefly and made a flatlander’s gesture that meant he accepted a portion of the hillman’s sorrow as his own. A hillman would have wailed and embraced him, but Rann knew he ought treasure this momentary touch as the best one Schooled could do.
Venkaaszbuul said, “Offer it up. One of their native Schools advises that, and it is very close to what the true School teaches. We are given no burdens that we cannot carry.”
Rann said, “As well, that, or we should have gone extinct long since. It is how the Winnower sculpts life.”
Venkaaszbuul grunted and made no comment. Flatlanders did not believe in the Winnower. He stood and went to the patio doors, which were glass, and lifted the curtain to gaze at the backhoe chugging in the yard.
“I heard him as I stood on your threshold.”
Rann came to his side but made no reply.
Venkaaszbuul said, “This land looked different when last I saw it.”
“The houses weren’t here then. New trees have grown, and old trees have fallen—or grown taller.” Faintly, from somewhere across the woods, came the sound of children playing. Yet another of the many-worlds in which he would never live was the world in which he had young in his steading. But he mastered himself like a Schoolman. Venkaaszbuul and his people had been right about one thing: to remain unremarked, they had to adopt the stoicism of this world’s people. “Did you hear that they de-orbited their space station?”
Venkaaszbuul bobbed his head in the human style. “It was why I bethought myself the visiting of you, my crew.”
“How many…How many of us are left?”
“Eight. You were the last on my list.” After a pause, he added, “It was not much of a space station.”
“It was the only one they had. Perhaps the only one they will ever have. The fall recalled to me the plunge of our own ship, and plunged me into a deep melancholy. Do you think…Do you think the other lifeboats made it to shore?”
Venkaaszbuul made a gesture of uncertainty. It so resembled a hillman’s gesture of assurance that Rann knew a moment of hope before he realized the error.
“We were fortunate,” Venkaaszbuul said, “that your piloting skills brought us down here, where there were few people, and those easily over-awed. It gave us time for the learning, for the surgery, for the mastery of their language.”
“Dutch.”
“Suppose we had burned up in shoals, our angle of attack too steep; or plunged into one of the boundless seas that swamp this world; or grounded in civilized lands, where they would have quite rationally stoned us or burned us. When you ponder the many-worlds that the quanta tell us might have been, remember that most would have been worse than this. Why not approach the past with gratitude rather than tears?”
“A School trick. Because this is of the many-worlds the best? That may be cause for the greatest melancholy of all.”
“Ah, Rann, I’d not have the stealing from you of that melancholy which you so treasure; but why not suppose that the others landed safely and have been ‘lying low,’ just as we have.”
Rann said, “Then perhaps we should stand up straight.”
Venkaaszbuul stood a while longer at the glass doors before letting the curtain fall. “Why? So we can be spirited off for the studying in some secret laboratory?”
“They would be insane to so risk the wrath of a star-faring people of unknown powers.”
“If I am to place myself in trust of their sanity, your objection answers itself. Whether they burn us at the stake or dissect us in the lab, I would just as soon not face them with the choice.”
“But if they knew we had among them come, they might strive again to reach the stars.”
“To what point, navigator? Once there was a hope that they might find our old base on Mars—or the observation post on the Moon—and we could scavenge the materials to build a messenger packet or a communicator and so secure rescue. But only a double-handful of us now remain, and each of us nearing the end of days.” He glanced at his hands, turned them over. “Less than a double-handful. Forgive my error. If you must weep, Rann—and I know you must—weep that the humans never reached Mars when we were young enough and numerous enough for it to matter.”
The backhoe’s engine revved and the claw dug into the earth. Steve, perched in the driver’s seat, worked the levers back and forth. He did not notice the watchers. Venkaaszbuul grunted. “Is that where he is?”
Rann understood. “Somewhere in there. When the wreck hit, it threw dirt over everything.”
“The boat still lies beneath the trees?”
Rann gestured yes. “The inertial sheath would have long ago shut down; so the earth has been working on it.”
“Poshtli should have worn his life vest; but lakelanders are more feckless even than hillmen.”
“Maybe he did wear an inertia bubble, and it failed him when we were forced to leap. One more sorrow. One more might-have-been.” Rann imagined all the possible Poshtlis whose lives had not been lived, even here among the savages.
“You expect this hired man of yours to dig up Poshtli’s corpse?”
“A corpse unmodified by the nanosurgery. Our insides may be passing strange, but outwardly you and I appear merely foreign.”
“Which is why we permit no autopsy.”
“But Poshtli’s mummy will appear more than passing strange. The humans will realize that aliens have been among them; they will restart their space programs in an effort to find our world. It is too late for us; but not for them.”
“You vastly underestimate their capacity for self-deception. They will call it a hoax, or an odd and crippling mutation.”
Rann hugged himself with both arms. “Captain, of the crew and science staff how many were still aboard Vital Being when she hit shoals and burned?”
Venkaaszbuul looked at him for a long time. Then, he said, “I believe all made it to the boats; and perhaps the boats all made it to shore and they have been living out their days concealed as we are.”
Rann laughed. “Now you are overestimating my capacity for self-deception.”
“But Rann, you know the law of the quanta. When you don’t know, anything is possible.”
That night Rann and his captain ate dinner together, and Rann prepared a meal that would not irritate their digestive tracts. They raised a glass—of filtered wine—to their comrades who had perished and another to those who inevitably would soon perish. Rann proposed a toast to the earth—the real earth, not this one on which they had been shipwrecked for so long—and he sang a poem in puralon to honor them, even improvising a stanza in praise of the flatlands. Venkaaszbuul declaimed a heroic ballad in chegk concerning some bold explorer of ages past; and it was g
ood to hear the old tongues and the old songs, even in chegk, and to praise a world whose star did not so much as shine in this planet’s skies. They both wept—even the flatlander captain so forgot his Schooling that tears wet his face in abundance—and they embraced and promised never again to allow the years to intervene so thickly.
In the morning, Venkaaszbuul secured Rann’s promise that, should the excavation by wild chance unearth the body of Poshtli the Lakelander, he would not disclose in any manner that there were others yet living who wore such unlikely bones beneath their skins. And then he departed.
Later that same day, a sheriff’s deputy served Rann with a court order to cease and desist all digging. His neighbor Alma Seakirt had objected that since the encumbrance against digging appeared in all the other deeds surrounding the wood, and because the clear intent had always been to protect the woodland, it must have been omitted in error from the Vander Alkrenn deed. Rann Valkran disputed the order in township court and when he lost, appealed to the State, where he lost again.
By that time, the hole that he and Steve had excavated had been filled in and, per court order, planted in wildflowers. As a sign of hope in the future, Ms. Seakirt said.
Rann took it hard, his neighbor later observed, and could be seen on his patio sitting before the filled-in swimming pool weeping into his lemonade. He had always been a sensitive soul, Shaw commented, much given to tears and melancholy as well as sudden enthusiasms. Even in his happier moments, he had seemed haunted by some great and terrible sorrow in his past whose memory would not release him.
So it came as no surprise when Shaw saw him one morning lying dead with a shovel in his hand in a hole he had dug in his ground. Like everyone else, he assumed at first that it had been suicide. But suicide over a swimming pool never dug? In the end, there were enough anomalies—the position of the body, the placement of the wound, certain papers he had filed with his lawyer, Sèan FitzPatrick—for the coroner to rule ‘suspicious circumstances,’ and order an autopsy.
***
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