At peace, she lay back against a cushion and let the sounds of the village lull her to sleep, and woke hours later to Supaari’s touch and to the quiet that signaled consensus, when all that needed to be considered had been said; with a decision reached, the council had dispersed.
"Tomorrow, at second dawn," Supaari told her, distilling hours of debate. "We’ll stay in the forest as long as possible—it’s a little farther to walk, but it will be safer than taking the shortest route across the savannah. When we have to cross open country, we’ll travel at night."
Sofia sat up, looking around the village. The last meal of the day was being prepared. Everyone was settling in for the evening.
"Shall you be sad to leave, Fia?" Supaari asked, hunkering down next to her.
She listened to the whispering of the fathers, the cooing and giggles of the children. "They have been so kind—so good to us," she said, missing them already, all the irritation and impatience swept away by a flood of gratitude. "If only there were some way to repay them…"
"Yes," Supaari agreed. "But I think the best course is to leave. The patrols are looking for us, Sofia. We can only be a danger to the Runa now."
THE BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY WAS NO DIFFERENT FROM A HUNDRED other foraging expeditions Sofia had participated in, strange only in that the specially woven backbasket she wore was not empty at the start of the trip. Kanchay and Tinbar and Sichu-Lan had come along with Djalao, to help carry the children and the burdens of travel; the conversation was lighthearted, the Runa men looking forward to seeing friends and relatives in Kashan for the first time in years. For a time, there was only the metronome beat of their legs, and Sofia hardly heard the talk that went on around her, content to have Isaac march along at her side, his taut, little body wiry and beautiful. He’s going to be tall, she realized, like his father.
The highlands began to flatten on the third day and they came at last to a place where the light brightened noticeably and the woodland grew drier, rains balked by mountains to the west. The canopy was still intact overhead, but here the trees were more widely spaced, and at the edge of the woods, Sofia could just make out a subsidence smoothing onto a savannah that stretched all the way to Kashan.
"We’ll wait here," Djalao said, so they put their baskets down, fed Isaac and Ha’anala, and had a meal themselves.
As the light began to change, and second sundown approached, Isaac insisted as always that the songs be sung. The three male Runa went off some distance and clamped their ears shut and swayed. Djalao remained nearby, listening to Supaari impassively, ears high, as though she were putting herself to a sort of test of strength, Sofia thought. When the chants were done, Djalao’s immobility broke and she dug into one of the packs, handing around a jar of strong-smelling ointment that the Runa began to smear into their groins and armpits and along their legs and arms.
"Stinks like a pack of benhunjaran," Supaari growled, his face twisted with distaste as Djalao rubbed the grease into his fur. Watching Sofia dip a tiny hand into the jar, he explained, "Even if a Jana’ata patrol catches the scent during redlight, they’ll move upwind and as far away as possible the next morning." He studied the four Runa with ears cocked forward. "Someone wonders, how long have the people been getting away with this trick?"
Kanchay laughed his soft, huffing chuckle, and looked at Sofia. She smiled back, wishing she had a tail to drop as she said, "The djanada are like ghosts. They can be fooled." Supaari grunted, refusing to be baited.
They waited, the adults’ silence underscored by Ha’anala’s purring and Isaac’s monotone mutter, until Supaari declared himself blind as dirt, which meant that any other Jana’ata would be equally sightless. Then they moved out, the Jana’ata stumbling and self-conscious, but gamely allowing himself to be guided toward the forest edge, his nose and ears working constantly to pull in as much information as he could from scent and sound.
They had planned for stealth: they would move unseen in redlight, their true scents undetectable beneath the stench of Djalao’s ointment. They had forgotten about the vast incendiary sky of Rakhat’s smallest sun. But as the little party stepped away from the familiar blue-green canopy of the forest, Isaac Mendes Quinn saw not the heavens but the vault of a red hell.
BRILLIANT STREAMERS OF VIOLENT, CRIMSON CLOUD, ABOUT TO fall on him—a whole huge landscape, bloody red and purple, about to crush him—the plain’s panorama just beyond his hands—small, inadequate shields thrown up to parry the impact. He screamed once and then screamed again, and then screamed and screamed, as the woods exploded with wings and raucous calls and the crash of vegetation giving way to fleeing wildlife. Arms tried to eat him alive! Noise everywhere—Ha’anala howling, the Runa keening, Supaari, frantic, shouting over and over, "What has happened? What is it?" Red—the ground, the air, behind his hands, behind his eyes, squeezed shut—
It was his mother’s voice that found him under the monstrous sky. Somehow in the chaos, he heard the low, grainy notes of the Sh’ma: soft, soft in his ear, soft, over and over, not insistent but consistent. Not the meaningless babble of words but the ordered, predictable, sacred haven of music: safety to move toward, a way out of the wilderness.
He could not get there for a long time but, as he exhausted himself, the screaming slowed and quieted to long, sucking sobs. At last, kneeling on the damp ground with his arms wrapped around his head, his narrow little hips thrust in the air, Isaac rocked in rhythm to his mother’s voice, and found his way to the music: to salvation.
He slept then, limp, and did not know that the adults would not sleep for hours, their plans in ruins.
"ALL RIGHT," SOFIA SAID WEARILY, WHEN SUPAARI WOKE AT DAWN. "WE are going to leave the children here for now. You and Sichu-Lan and Tinbar can stay with them. Kanchay, Djalao and I will go on alone to the lander. I’ve checked the fuel levels and I can make a flight back here to collect you and the children and the trade goods without risking the return to the mother ship. We can carry Isaac into the plane while he’s asleep. By the time he wakes up, we’ll be on board the Magellan. Do you understand?"
"I’m coming with you."
"Oh, God, Supaari, we argued all night. It’s been decided—"
"I’m coming with you," he insisted.
Already the male Runa were swaying. Sofia glanced at Djalao, who was visibly tired but as determined as Sofia to keep the men from falling apart. "Sipaj, Supaari. You are a hazard," Sofia told him firmly. "You will slow us down—"
"We will travel in full daylight. We can make the journey in half the time that way, and we won’t have to do it reeking of benhunjaran—"
"Sipaj, Supaari, are you mad?" She turned to Djalao, silently pleading for help. "If a patrol sees us—"
"There is a bounty for me and for any foreigner," Supaari reminded her in English. He turned to Djalao. "Someone thinks these Runa are delivering outlaws to the authorities."
"And when such a patrol finds us-and-you-also? They will take custody," Djalao said, her bloodshot eyes calm.
"Then we-and-you-also will kill them in their sleep."
"Supaari!" Sofia gasped, but Djalao said, "So be it," without waiting for the others to express an opinion. "We’ll rest until second sunrise. Then we’ll go."
THE PLAINS WERE EMPTY, AND FOR A TIME IT APPEARED THAT THE worry and precautions were unjustified. For two days, they seemed to be the highest things on the horizon. No one challenged or greeted them, and Supaari should have been reassured, but he wasn’t. There’s something wrong with the sky, he thought, lowering his backbasket and sitting on the ground while the Runa foraged. The light was subtly dimmed in a way he couldn’t define. A volcano? he wondered.
"Supaari?"
He turned and saw Sofia, who was gnawing on a betrin root. She looked so brown! Was there something wrong with his eyes or had she changed color? Unsure of his own perceptions, Supaari gestured toward the sky. "Does that look right to you?" he asked.
She frowned. "It does look… odd somehow. The suns
are out, but it seems a little dark," she said. Almost five years in a forest, she thought, remembering sunlight shattered by shifting leaves. "I’m not sure I remember what the sky is supposed to look like!"
"Sipaj, Djalao," Supaari called softly. She straightened from the melfruit bush she was stripping. "There’s something wrong with the sky."
Sofia snorted. "You sound like Isaac," she told Supaari as Djalao walked over, but sobered when she saw the Runao’s face.
"The color is wrong," Djalao agreed uneasily.
Supaari stood and faced into the wind, clearing his lungs through his mouth, then inhaled a long breath through his nostrils; the breeze was too stiff for a coherent plume, but he hoped at least to snatch a hint from the air. Djalao watched him intently. "No sulfur," he told her. "Not a volcano."
"This is trouble," Djalao whispered, not wanting to alarm Kanchay, who was ambling over with an armload of trijat leaf.
Sofia asked, "What’s wrong?"
"Nothing," said Djalao, glancing significantly at Kanchay, who’d had enough to cope with the past few days.
But Supaari told Sofia quietly, "We’ll know in the morning."
IN THE STILL AIR, LIT BY THE LOW LIGHT OF FIRST DAWN, THE PALL OF smoke became visible, its multiple columns rising and coalescing in the sky like the stems of a hampiy tree rising to meet in its crown. That day, as they moved downwind of the closest villages, even Sofia could detect the smell of char, which penetrated the stench of benhunjaran ointment lingering in their hair.
"Kashan will be all right," Kanchay said over and over, as they walked. "The djanada burned our garden a long time ago." And the VaKashani had been compliant and virtuous by Jana’ata standards ever since.
But he was alone in his hope, and as they approached the wreckage of the Magellan’s lander, the bodies became visible in the distance: some butchered, some scavenged, most twisted and blackened by fire.
Sofia left the VaRakhati staring across the plain toward the corpses, and climbed into the remains of the Magellan lander emptied by vandals. Someone’s crying, she thought, and wondered Who, as the sound of sobbing reverberated hollowly against the hull. She paid no attention— hardly heard it, really. Things could be worse, she thought, wiping her face and picking through the wreckage. She found odds and ends of useful technology, the best of which was a spare computer tablet stowed in a locker that had been overlooked in the pillaging. Careful not to cut herself on the jagged metal where the cargo-bay door had been forced open, she reemerged into the smoky sunlight and joined the others. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, she flipped the new tablet open and accessed the Magellan’s system, concentrating on finding the past week’s meteorological imaging logs.
"They must have hit every village that ever had a garden," she told Supaari without emotion, recognizing the diffusion pathways that Anne Edwards had identified years earlier.
"But there are no more gardens," Kanchay said plaintively, looking back toward his vanished village. "We never planted food again."
"Every place we foreigners and you touched," Sofia said, looking up at Supaari. "Gone."
"All my villages," he whispered. "Kashan, Lanjeri, Rialner. All those people…"
"Who can wear so many ribbons?" Kanchay asked, dazed. "Why would they do this? What gives them the right?"
"The new Paramount’s legitimacy is in question," Djalao explained, her voice as empty as Sofia’s. "The lords say he is not suitable for his office. He must be seen to restore balance, to remove all foreign and criminal influence from his territories."
"But he said the south was restored to order!" Kanchay cried. "The radio reports all said—" Kanchay turned and looked at Sofia and Djalao. "What gives them the right?" he asked, and when no one responded, Kanchay took three long steps toward Supaari, and shoved the Jana’ata hard. "What gives you the right?" he demanded.
"Kanchay!" Sofia cried, startled out of her own numbness.
"What gives you the right?" Kanchay shouted, but before the Jana’ata could stammer an answer, the Runao’s anger erupted like molten rock and he was roaring now—"What gives you the right?" — over and over, each word punctuated with a blow and a burst of blood from the face of a man who staggered back but did nothing to counter the attack.
Her face white with terror, Sofia scrambled up and threw her arms around Kanchay. He flung her off like a rag doll, not even pausing in his assault. "Kanchay!" Sofia screamed, astonished, and tried again to push between the two men, only to be knocked away once more. "Djalao!" she shouted from the ground, her own face spattered with gore. "Do something! He’s going to kill Supaari!"
For an eternity, Djalao stood gaping, too stunned to move. Then finally, she dragged Kanchay off the bleeding Jana’ata.
Shocked senseless, all of them stood or knelt or lay where they were, until the sound of Kanchay’s gasping grief subsided. It was only then that Supaari got to his feet, and spat blood, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He wheeled slowly, looking all around him, as though searching for something he would never find again; leaned back against his tail, winded and lost.
Then, without a word, he walked away from the ruins of Kashan, empty-handed and empty-souled.
THE OTHERS FOLLOWED. HE DIDN’T CARE. HE DID NOT EAT; COULD NOT, in truth. Regret sickened him as much as the cloying smoke of burnt meat that remained in his fur despite two drenching rains on the journey back to the forest. Not even the scent of his infant daughter could drive off the stink of death; when they were reunited at the woodland’s edge, he refused to hold Ha’anala. He did not want to contaminate his child with what her people—what his people—
What he had done.
When at last they arrived at Trucha Sai, he was too far gone in guilt to hear what anyone said. He sat at the edge of the clearing, allowing no one to touch him, not even to scrub the stink from his coat. What gives us the right? he asked himself when the sky’s darkness matched his heart’s. What gives us the right?
He did not sleep that first night back among the Runa; when dawn lightened the sky enough for him to see, he left before they roused. No Runao could track him, and he believed that death would find him in the forest if he simply waited long enough. For uncounted days in a black absence of thought, he wandered aimlessly while it was light, lay down wherever he was when fatigue and hunger overcame him. On that last night, with his gut cramped against its hollowness, he sank blindly to the ground near a recently abandoned tinper nest. It was crawling with vicious little khimali and, while he slept, they burrowed through his fur and fastened onto his skin, making a meal of his blood. He awoke once in the middle of the night to physical misery, bleeding from thousands of small wounds, but did not move or try to pick the parasites from his body.
Close now, he thought with vague relief. He did not so much fall asleep as lose consciousness. It rained that night. He didn’t hear the thunder.
It was full morning when the bright golden glare of the middle sun found his face through a small space in the shifting leaves. Sodden, curled on the forest floor, he opened his eyes without lifting his head and dully watched the khimali at close range as they trundled through the miniature forest of fine fur that covered his wrist.
They don’t take enough to kill their host, Supaari thought, sorry to have lived through the night, and disgusted by the jointed carapaces, the scuttling gait of the bloated little beasts. They suck blood and give back nothing. That is the way of parasites. They…
He sat up, and blinked—
He was dizzy and near starvation, but his mind felt at that moment perfectly translucent. The sensation, he would tell Sofia later, was not serenity—although he knew even then that serenity would be his reward, when his part in the plan was fulfilled. What he felt was joy. It seemed to him that perfection was revealed all around him, that he and the forest and the khimali were all one thing, all part of a strange brilliance. Sunlight shafted the small clearing, and this too seemed a revelation. His own confusion and wretchedness had p
arted, like clouds, and allowed this… illumination to penetrate. He could envision everything before him: the steps he would take, the path he would travel, the end. He had only to see it through.
Everything was clear to him now.
This joy lasted only a little while, but he knew he would never be the same. When it passed, he staggered to his feet, unaware of his own lightheadedness. A strong odor caught his attention; something had died that morning somewhere in the understory. Without thinking, he crouched and spun slowly, tail sweeping low through the vegetation, arms flung outward for balance, sampling the air until he located the source of the scent: a good-sized bush wa’ile, wasted with age. Supaari ate it raw, ripping its belly open with his teeth and claws. Better a scavenger, he thought, than a parasite.
He knew, even then, that he would eat Runa again. The difference was that he meant now to transform their sacrifice. He would return it to them: life for life.
"SIPAJ, SUPAARI!" THE RUNA CRIED WHEN THEY FIRST SAW HIM STANDING at the edge of the settlement. "We thought you were gone!"
"Keep distance—someone must stay apart," he said, and he held out his arms to display the sores in his armpits, the blotched red stains that spoiled his coat.
Sofia approached despite his warning and said, "Someone will groom you. Someone is so—"
"Stay back," he said. Her offer touched him to his heart, but he could not permit this, not yet. Looking past Sofia toward the Runa, he gazed at the village, neat, well cared for and well run; gazed at the Runa themselves, who had lived in Trucha Sai for years without Jana’ata interference or exploitation. "What causes these sores?" he asked them loudly. There was a mutter of response and a tendril of their anxiety began to reach him. He was worrying them and he regretted that. But it was necessary—this confusion before clarity. "What causes them?" he asked again.
Children of God s-2 Page 28