The Broken God Machine

by Christopher Buecheler

  Pehr was silent, knowing that this assessment was accurate, but not quite ready to admit it.

  “I’m not angry,” Tasha said after a time. She was sitting with her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them, looking up at the stars.

  “I never know how you’re feeling,” Pehr said.

  “If I’m ever angry with you, there won’t be any doubt.”

  “Would you be angry if I did want to court you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Pehr found her lack of emotion simultaneously frustrating and oddly appealing. It was refreshing to deal with someone for whom there was only truth, with very little concern for subtlety or evasion. Pehr decided to try something more direct.

  “Would you want me to court you?”

  Tasha shook her head. “I am not in love with you. Kissha, perhaps … but not me.”

  “Kissha is too young to be in love.”

  “And too young to court, even if she was.”

  “So you don’t want me to court you, and you’re not upset that I don’t want to court you.”

  Tasha stretched and yawned, and the silver moon outlined the long curves of her body. “No, I’m not.”

  “And you’re not upset that I would … take you to bed, if you let me?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to take you to bed?”

  Tasha glanced at him again, eyebrows lifted. “Right here?”

  Pehr laughed again, rolling his eyes. “I don’t understand you at all.”

  “But I’m easy to understand, Pehr. I don’t lie, or couch my words, or play games with those I speak to. If I want something from you, I will ask for it. If I am angry with you, I will tell you.”

  “And if you sit here answering my questions with only the most minimal of responses?”

  “You are not asking questions that require more response,” she said. “Ask me a question that comes from your head and not your chukka.”

  “My what?”

  “Your other head – the one that’s standing up right now because you’re still thinking about bedding me.”

  Pehr felt his cheeks warm and looked away instinctively, then back at Tasha. He hadn’t thought she was paying enough attention to him to notice.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Tasha shrugged. “I’m not angry. Pehr, I can only be who I am. I’m not like my parents, or like anyone else I have ever met. You are more like them than I am, and you have come from some other world that none of us even knew existed.”

  She was barely paying attention, braiding three long strands of grass into a single cable. Beside her the fire was guttering, and Pehr knew that soon they would head back to the dwelling and sleep. He was tired from the hunt, and from the working of the tral that had come afterward. He and the other hunters had brought down the three cripples and the old bull, and Pehr had earned a set of horns for himself with a clean shot to the back of a tral’s neck. They had skinned and cleaned the beasts, and portioned out the meat. Ehella and Tasha had spent a great deal of time that evening salting the meat and stretching the hides on racks built for the purpose.

  Some part of him, his chukka he supposed, hadn't entirely given up interest in Tasha, and he spoke. “You never really answered my last question.”

  Tasha finally turned and looked at him, favoring him with a small smile.

  “I do not want you to bed me, Khada’Pehr,” she said. “Should that change, I assure you, you will be the first to know.”

  She stood and tossed her braided grass into the remains of the fire, where it flamed up and was gone in an instant. Pehr stood as well, and the two of them first poured water on the embers and then pushed dirt atop them.

  Pehr thought again of his village. He wondered if Josep had survived, if he and Nani had married yet. It seemed like ages since he had last seen them, and yet it had been less than a month. Did they still think of him? Did they hold out hope that he and Jace might yet return from the jungle? Or had they given the two boys up for dead?

  “I will have to return to that other world soon,” he told Tasha, and she made a noncommittal noise in response. Without turning to look at him, as though confident that he would come behind her, she began her way back to the tent. After a moment, he followed.

  Pehr lived there with his new family, on the plains of Tassanna, for two years.

  Part Two

  :: EYES ONLY :: Blakely ::

  ***** SUBJECT: J830.e314

  ***** APX DIAM: 125 KM

  ***** APX DENS: 1000 KG/M3

  ***** APX VELO: 52 KM/S

  ***** APX ANGL: 89°

  ***** EXPECTED TARGET: 31.8, 35.2

  ***** ETA: 75:42:15

  ***** MESSAGE FOLLOWS:

  ***** they’re not supposed to get this big.

  ***** give the order.

  ***** god forgive us.

  Chapter 15

  The sword was made of steamed and twisted wood, not metal. Pehr was glad for this fact, but not so glad that he was able to keep from crying out in pain and anger as it came down hard upon the spot between his neck and shoulder. The agony of it drove him to one knee, and he stayed there for a time with his head down, panting.

  “That was a kill,” Samhad told him, and he could hear the smile in the older man’s voice.

  “I know,” Pehr said. “Curse your eyes … I know.”

  Samhad only laughed at this and held out a hand, which Pehr took. Even after two years of training, it was a rare occasion when Pehr managed to best the man who had become his surrogate father. More often than not, he walked away from their sessions baring only the bright red weals left by the practice swords. Still, he continued on, learning this new weapon and method of fighting, driven by the need to add any skill that might help him as a hunter.

  The swords – the real ones – were short and curved and made of metal. The creation of a single blade took months of work, and once it was done it required great vigilance to ensure the sword was properly cared for. Without routine cleaning and oiling, it would corrode and become worthless. There were few smiths among the plainsmen; this made the swords an expensive commodity, and it would be years yet before Pehr could collect enough tral hides to barter for one of his own. In the interim, he had made himself a new knife of bone and fashioned a club from the knobby joint of a tral leg that was superior even to the one he had lost in the jungle.

  Samhad clapped him on the shoulder. “You are much improved from when you started, Pehr, and I have trained for many long years. Don’t be discouraged.”

  “I’m not so terribly discouraged,” Pehr told him. “Mainly I’m lamenting the bruise.”

  “What was it your uncle used to tell you?”

  “Painful lessons make good hunters,” Pehr replied. “Yes. Thank you for this particularly … excellent lesson, Samhad.”

  Samhad laughed again. “Come, there is dinner to be had and plans to be made. I have heard word of a herd of tral, ten thousand head at least, not too many days’ journey from here. Perhaps we should venture out to see them.”

  “That would be a sight well worth the trip,” Pehr said, and he got to his feet. The two of them headed for the tents. Night had nearly come, and there was little point in further practice; it would soon be too dark to see.

  Inside there was a meal waiting of fresh-roasted tral and pulped esquer root mixed with butter and a kind of small, green onion that grew in abundance on the plains. Pehr sat with his new family and ate, discussing the events of the day and the plans for tomorrow. There was a grove of jesuva trees not far away and Samhad wanted to take the opportunity to replenish their supply of firewood before the tral moved on. The work would be laborious, but he and Pehr could split many logs between them, and probably fill to brimming the space reserved for wood in the wheeled cart in which they moved their belongings.

  Pehr and Samhad were not the only ones with work to do; the women had hides to tan, supplies to gather, clothing to make. Kissha and Mandia were
now thirteen years old and performed a wide variety of chores. Ketrahm, at eight, held quite a few daily responsibilities as well. Ehella had given birth to a second son – Trayin – during the winter, and it was good that the other children were old enough to shoulder some of the load.

  The family had been successful in the past two years, and it had allowed Samhad and Ehella to acquire a second, smaller hide tent, where they slept with the baby. Pehr and Tasha remained in the main dwelling with Kissha, Mandia, and Ketrahm. With the meal over and the last evening chores finished, they split apart now to sleep, and in only a short time Pehr found himself lying awake on his cot, staring up through the hole in the ceiling at the stars while those around him slept. He could hear grunting and soft cooing from the other tent, Samhad and Ehella taking advantage of the time before the baby woke demanding to be fed. To his left, Kissha and Mandia lay on identical cots, snoring gently in identical tones. To his right, Tasha and Ketrahm were quiet, undisturbed by dreams.

  Pehr closed his eyes and tried to think of the sound of the sea, crashing against the rocks of the lagoon at the edge of Uru, the world he had known. When the sound of it would not immediately come to him, a great wave of crushing sadness rolled over him, so strong that he had to stifle a sob. He was losing them; Nani and Anna and Truff. Josep. Even Jace. The memory of the boy whose body he had left in the circle of bone now seemed distant to him. Thin. Like a ghost. They were fading into the past, as all things must that are no longer reaffirmed by familiar routine.

  He missed them. He missed his family, missed his village, missed the sea and wanted to hear once more its steady roar. He was tired of the plains, tired of tral meat and esquer root, tired of asking each man he was introduced to if they had encountered any passes through the mountains, only to be met again and again with slow shakes of the head. He wanted to eat red fish and corn, and lie on the sand under the stars, and swim in the shallows. He wanted to be the boy he had been before all of these terrible events had come to pass.

  He knew he should leave, knew he should try to make his way back to where he belonged, but it had become impossible to deny the truth: he feared returning to the metal thing’s circle of death. He was afraid of the Lagos, and the guardian, and most of all of facing Jace again. The boy would still be there, even if by now he was only bone. Pehr did not know if he could face his cousin’s silent judgment. Here on the plains, it was easy to simply let time pass rather than brave the pain and danger of that grim circle.

  Even should he do so, and survive the perilous journey back to his land, he would be presented only with the opportunity to tell Nani that he had failed her, and that her brother was dead. After that, what was there? He would join the hunt, marry, father children, and grow old watching the women he loved be wife to some other hunter and mother to that man’s children. Surely the plains could offer more than that. And yet …

  “I want to go home,” he muttered to himself, and then said it again. “I want to go home.”

  Worn out from the chores and the training, Pehr could feel sleep taking him. He closed his eyes and willingly met its advances.

  * * *

  “My father asked again if I would not at least consider finding a man who would take me as his wife,” Tasha said, smiling a little, and Pehr smirked, shaking his head. They were walking in the tall grass, as they often did after the evening meal, happy to be away from the smoky tent and the pestering of the Tasha's siblings. She had her walking stick with her – a work in progress begun long ago. Its head was decorated with partridge feathers, and its body was covered in intricate carvings, added slowly and with great patience over the years. If there was an object that she valued more in the world, Pehr couldn't have identified it.

  “Oh, yes?” Pehr asked. “What did you say to him this time?”

  “That I was saving myself for a man who would brave the wasting disease of the north just to pluck a single flower for me of a type that I had never seen before, and that I would consider no other, and were he a truly loving father he would understand my needs and respect them.”

  “And his response?”

  Tasha's smile became a rare grin. “He told me there were some who thought such impertinent mouths deserved striking, and that I was lucky he was not such a one.”

  Pehr laughed. The idea of Samhad hitting one of his children seemed impossible; the plainsman, gruff though he was, stopped just short of doting on them.

  “Never,” Pehr said. “Not him. Ehella, maybe …”

  Tasha nodded, her grin fading, her eyes far off. “He favors you, you know.”

  Pehr did, but it felt unseemly to say so. “If you think so.”

  Tasha rolled her eyes, coming back from her reverie a little. “Don't give me your false modesty. It's plainly clear that, were you to propose to me, he might leapt forth and accept for me before I could open my mouth.”

  “But I'm not going to propose to you,” Pehr said, and he laughed again. “I simply couldn't bear the rejection.”

  Tasha sighed, ignoring the joke. “If there was a husband in my future, I think you would make a fine one.”

  “I wouldn’t think you’d want me. Are you trying to spare my feelings, Tasha? I was only jesting about being hurt.”

  She turned, raised an eyebrow. “No. Why wouldn’t I want you, if I were to want anyone?”

  “You're too smart for me. Everything for you is a puzzle, a great knot to be unraveled in your mind and laid out flat, and most often when you attack such a knot you succeed. I can't keep up. What would you need from a slow-witted hunter's son who just wants to raise a family, keep them fed and safe, and avoid angering the gods you don't even believe in?”

  Tasha shook her head. “You are not slow-witted. You're … deliberate.”

  “You're avoiding the question.”

  “Only because you know the answer.”

  He did. Tasha needed no man, and she never had. She understood objectively that Pehr was everything most women of the plains would want in a husband. Eighteen now, he had gained two inches in height, his body filling out and growing more muscular. He had adapted to his new home. He would never again lack for water on the plains, never go hungry, never find himself lost and unable to navigate his way back to familiar landmarks.

  Samhad had taught him much, and many of the other hunters had chipped in as well. He was not a plainsman, and never would be, but he had become something close enough to earn the respect of others his age, and the approval of those older and wiser. His strength and skill and gentle nature made him an excellent prospect for marriage, and Pehr would not have lacked for young women’s attention, if not for the pretense that he was courting Tasha.

  “I think Samhad is growing concerned,” Pehr said, and Tasha nodded.

  “If we return to the southlands and you and I are not engaged, it will be the end of the deception. His fondness for you is too obvious … if you were really courting me, you would long since have asked me to marry. They might believe that I, a semi-mad girl clearly stricken with some sort of brain fever, had refused your advances, but if so then why would you continue to travel with our family? No, the elders will insist you move on this winter. The tribe always needs babies, and I am clearly not giving you any.”

  Pehr could think of worse things than being forced to pursue a woman who would actually deign to mate with him. Frustrated, he had sometimes considered actually asking Tasha to wed, if only to force the issue and end the charade. The illusion that he was courting her made pursuing any other girl impossible. Was he to remain a virgin forever, alone and unmarried, the last of his father’s line with no children to carry on his blood?

  “If I am ordered from your family, I will return to mine,” Pehr said. “I won't stay here alone, not even to meet a wife.”

  Tasha shook her head. “You must not go.”

  “So you've said for two years. What great service am I doing you, Tasha, that you’re so insistent in keeping me at your side?”

  She frow
ned at him. “Perhaps it's simply that you are my friend. Is that so hard to believe?”

  He nodded. “And you’re mine, though we make an unlikely pair, but I don't think that's why you say I mustn't go.”

  Tasha stopped in the grass and rubbed at her temples for a moment before looking up at him. The sun was almost gone, and in the growing shadow he could barely make out the strange tint of her eyes.

  “Do you remember when you told me of the Great Destruction, and I became so very excited?”

  “I do.”

  “I listen to all of the old tales, even though I believe most to be nonsense, because there is a kernel of truth in every myth, every legend, every story. Don't you find it odd that we would share the belief that long ago a breaking of the world occurred? Don't you think it interesting that we both call it by the same name? Pehr, don't you find it virtually impossible and completely fascinating that we share the same language at all? How can it be?”

  Pehr shook his head. He didn't know the answer to that question. “It has vexed me in the past,” he admitted.

  “There is a chance for you and me … a chance to do great work. I will be ready when it comes.”

  “Yet you've no belief in destiny.”

  She shook her head. “There is no destiny. There is only fate. Or, rather, something which some call fate, but which is really only a confluence of streams.”

  “I don't understand,” Pehr said. Tasha began moving again, the grasses whispering as she passed through them, and for a moment he wondered if she meant to leave him in confusion. Then she began to speak.

  “Each person’s life is a stream,” Tasha told him. “Each plant, each bird, each beast … all streams. These streams twist and turn. Sometimes they run side by side for a time. Sometimes they merge. On occasion there is a confluence, a great meeting of streams, and they come together as a river. Rivers can move mountains and carve canyons. Rivers are agents of change that can impact the whole world. That point where streams meet and where a river may be born … that is a moment of fate.