The Many-Coloured Land

by Julian May

  They passed into a courtyard hemmed by ornate frosty buildings. Here a large door was suddenly flung open and golden radiance streamed forth, catching them by surprise. As the ramas stood solemnly by, human servitors came rushing out to take the bridles of the chalikos, unlock the ankle chains of the prisoners, and help them to dismount.

  Then came the Tanu, twenty or thirty of them, laughing and calling out greetings to Creyn in the exotic tongue and chattering in animated exuberance over the time-travelers in musical Standard English. The Tanu wore thin flowing gowns and robes of vivid tropical colors, together with fantastic jewelry, wide yoke-collars all gemmed and enameled, with brocaded and jeweled ribbons dangling front and rear. The women had wired headdresses all hung with gemstones. Here and there among the lofty exotics were a few smaller human figures, just as gaudily dressed, but wearing silver torcs instead of the Tanu gold. Bryan studied these privileged humans with interest. They seemed to be socially integrated with the taller ruling race and just as anxious to make the acquaintance of the overawed prisoners.

  Among the arrivals, only Aiken was completely at ease. With his pocketed suit flashing like liquid metal, he fairly hopped about the courtyard, making mocking obeisance to the laughing Tanu ladies, most of whom were nearly a third taller than he was. Bryan stood apart from the others and watched. The Tanu nobles were solicitous of the comfort of the prisoners, joking over the incongruity of the situation, somehow managing to make the newly met exiles feel wanted and welcome. Bryan had no doubt that mental speech was flying about as fervidly as the vocal sort. He wondered what kind of psychic stimulant might be operating at the lower levels of consciousness to make even sullen Raimo and the aloof Elizabeth slowly unbend and join in the conviviality. "We don't want you to feel left out, Bryan." The anthropologist turned and saw a slender exotic male garbed in a simple blue robe smiling at him. He had a handsome but sunken-eyed visage, lined about the mouth as Creyn's was. Bryan wondered whether this might be a sign of extreme age among these inhumanly youthful-looking people. The man's hair was of the palest ivory and he wore a narrow coronet of a material resembling blue glass.

  "Permit me to welcome you. I am your host, Bormol, like yourself a student of culture. How eagerly we have awaited the arrival of another trained analyst! The last anthropologist who came to us arrived nearly thirty years ago and he was unfortunately in frail health. And we need your insight so urgently! We have so much to learn about the interaction of our two races if this Exile society is to flourish to our mutual advantage. The science of your Galactic Milieu can teach us the things we must know in order to survive. Come, we have good food and drink waiting for you and your friends inside. Share with us some of your first impressions of our Many-Colored Land. Give us your initial reactions!"

  Bryan managed a rueful laugh. "You flatter me, Lord Bormol. And overwhelm me — I'm damned if I can make head or tail of your world as yet. After all, I've only just arrived. And excuse me, but I'm so tired out after this bloody shocking day that I'm ready to drop in my tracks."

  "Forgive me. I'd completely forgotten you're without a torc. The mental refreshment that our people have been lavishing over your companions hasn't affected you. If you wish, we can . . ."

  "No, thank you!"

  Creyn came up and smiled ironically at the anthropologist's sudden alarm. "Bryan would prefer to do his work without the consolations of the torc . . . in fact, he has made this a condition of cooperation."

  "You don't have to coerce me," Bryan said testily.

  "Don't misunderstand!" Bormol appeared pained. He gestured at the gaudy throng, now leading the other prisoners inside with every evidence of good fellowship. "Are your friends being coerced? The torc isn't a symbol of bondage but of union."

  Bryan felt a surge of anger and dreadful weariness erupt in him. His voice remained calm. "I know you mean well. But there are many of us humans, one might say most of us in my world of the future, most of the normal members of humanity, who would rather die than submit to your torc. In spite of all its consolations. Now you must excuse me. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not up to any learned discussions right now. I'd like to go to bed."

  Bormol bowed his head. One of the human servants came running up with Bryan's pack. "We will meet again in the capital. I hope you will have modified your harsh opinion of us by then, Bryan . . . This is Joe-Don, who will take you to a retiring room at once. Rest well."

  Bormol and Creyn glided away. Almost everyone else had already left the courtyard, "Right this way, sir," Joe-Don said, his breezy aplomb equal to that of a bell-man in one of the Old World's posher hostelries. "We've got a nice room ready for you. But too bad you'll miss the party."

  They went off into corridors decorated in brae and gold and white. Bryan caught a glimpse of the unconscious Stein being borne away on a litter by four more human attendants.

  "If there's a doctor in the house, Joe-Don, that man could use looking after. The poor chap got clobbered both physically and mentally."

  "Don't worry, sir. Lady Damone, Bormol's missus, an even better medic than Creyn. We get a lot of whacked out specimens passing through here, the time-portal being the shock that it is. But most of the casualties get fixed up pretty good. This Tanu bunch don't have anything like the tank regeneration equipment we grew up with, but they slop on through pretty good regardless. They're mighty tough themselves and they can heal most injuries and diseases with the help of the torcs. Lady Damone'll give your pal a good vein-feed and see to his scattered marbles. Another day, he'll be as good as new. Quite a pile of muscle, isn't he? They must have him tapped for the Grand Combat."

  "And what," Bryan asked quietly, "might that be?"

  Joe-Don blinked, then grinned. "Kind of sports event they have a couple of months from now, and around the end of October. Traditional with these folks. They're great ones for traditions . . . Well, here's your room, sir."

  He threw open the door to an airy chamber that had white draperies billowing in front of a large window. A vertical string of sapphire lanterns hung beside a cool-looking bed. More conventional oil lamps cast a pool of yellow radiance on a table where a simple supper had been laid out.

  Joe-Don said, "If you need anything, just pull this ring beside the bed and we'll come running. I don't suppose you'll require any consoling companionship? No? Well, sweet dreams anyhow."

  He whisked out and closed the door firmly behind him. Bryan didn't bother to test the lock. He gave a great sigh and began unbuttoning his shirt. Somehow, although he had not been aware of moving upward, he had come to the topmost floor of the Tanu mansion. The view from his window over looked much of the town and gave him a distant glimpse of the city gate. Roniah lay silent and glittering, an earthbound constellation, reminding him of a Christmas display he had seen long ago on one of the more extravagant Hispanic-heritage worlds.

  He wondered in a perfunctory fashion what kind of exotic cheer his companions were presently enjoying down at the Tanu party. No doubt he'd hear all about it tomorrow. Yawning, he folded the shirt . . . and felt the small bulk of the duro-film sheets tucked into the breast pocket. He took them out and there was her picture, glowing dimly with its own light.

  Oh, Mercy.

  Have they taken you and made you one of themselves, as they are trying to do with my friends? Thin sad woman with yearning sea-deep eyes and a smile that keeps me bound despite all reason! I have never heard you play your harp and sing; but my mind's ear creates you:

  There is a lady sweet and kind

  Was never face so pleased my mind.

  I did but see her passing by,

  And yet I love her till I die.

  Her gestures, motions, and her smile,

  Her wit, her voice my heart beguiled,

  beguiled my heart, I know not why.

  And yet I love her till I die.

  A deep brazen note sounded, snatching him from his fatigue-drugged reverie. It was the great gong at the city gate. The portal swung open in resp
onse, seeming to admit the rising sun.

  "Christ!" whispered Bryan. He watched transfixed as the Hunt came a-homing.

  A rainbow poured down the main avenue of the town, taking the same route that their own party had followed not long before. Flaring and twisting, the creature of light resolved itself into a procession of splendidly mounted Tanu leaping about with the antic joy of a Novo Janeiro Mardi Gras parade. Both chalikos and riders glowed with an internal effulgence that continually shifted up and down the entire spectrum. The Hunt came closer and closer and eventually passed almost under Bryan's window. He saw that the participants, men and women alike, were arrayed in bizarre armor, apparently of gem-studded glass, adorned with spikes and knobs and other decorative excrescences that gave them the look of humanoid crustaceans fashioned out of diamonds. The chalikos were partially armored with the same material and wore shining gems on their foreheads. Both mounts and riders trailed brightly colored streamers of gossamer fabric that emitted sparks from the tapered ends.

  The Hunt made a triumphant noise. The men struck their bejeweled shields with glowing glass swords to produce a musical clangor; some of the women sounded weirdly twisted glass horns with animal-head bells, and others chanted at the top of their powerful voices. Near the end of the parade were six riders glowing a uniform neon-red, evidently the heroes of this particular chase. They held tall lances, upon which were mounted the night's trophies.

  Severed heads.

  Four of the heads had belonged to monsters, a fanged and wattled horror gleaming black and wet, a reptile with ears like batwings and a fringe of tentacles at its cheeks that still twitched, a thing having branched golden antlers and the face of a bird of prey, a nightmare simian with pure white fur and still-blinking eyes the size of apples.

  The other two heads were smaller. Bryan saw them quite clearly as the procession passed by. They had belonged to an ordinary little man and woman of late middle age.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was the unexpected re-creation of old pain that finally gave Amerie her insight.

  The swollen ankles chained immobile to the high stirrups, the stretched muscles on the insides of her thighs, the horde of imps twanging toe spinal ganglia in the small of her back, the cramps in calves and knees, she remembered them . It had been just like this twenty-six years ago.

  Her father had told the family that descending into the Grand Canyon of the Colorado on a mule would be a wonderful adventure, a trip through a cut-open layer cake of planetary history that they would all look back and savor after they'd gone out to far Multnomah. And it had started out fine. On the trail down, Amerie the child delighted in fingering the strata of colored rock that became older and older, until at the bottom she had picked up a two-billion-year-old fragment of black glittering Vishnu schist and studied it with suitable awe.

  But then had come the journey back up to the Canyon's rim. And pain. That endless trip, with aching legs that finally went into spasms as she subconsciously tried to help the mule on its upward climb. Her parents were experienced trail riders and knew how to sit the slope. Her little brothers with their wire-and-plass toughness were happy to let their mounts do the work. But she, the conscientious one, had known the dreadful job that the mule was doing and had unwittingly demanded to share it. Toward the end she was crippled and weeping, and the others had sympathized with poor little Annamaria, but of course it was better to keep on riding and get to the top so that it would be over, rather than stop on the trail and delay the whole party. And Dad had urged her to be his big brave girl, and Mom had smiled pityingly, and the two little brothers had looked superior. Back on the South Rim, Dad had taken her into his arms and carried her to their room and put her to bed. She had slept for eighteen hours, and the brothers teased her for missing out on the egg ride to the Painted Desert, and she had felt guilty. That had started it all.

  Mom and Dad and the boys, all gone now. But the big girl still tried to carry her load no matter how much it hurt. So there. Now you begin to understand why you have come here and all the rest of it. This pain and the remembered old ones trigger the realization. And now, just as scab-rip and toothpull and boneset can help true healing begin, now you can recover! But God, what a fool you have been. And now here you are here and the insight has come too late.

  Amerie rode her chaliko in the Pliocene sunrise. Felice was asleep on the mount to her left, having told the nun that riding these animals was a pleasure after the half-tamed verruls of Acadie. All around the train of slumped riders, the birds of the plateau were clamoring in the dawn chorus. Should she sing her own song of praise in spite of everything? The sleep-learned Latin phrases presented themselves. Wednesday in Summer. She had forgotten Matins at midnight, so better do that before the Lauds that properly belong to dawn.

  She chanted softly as the eastern sky turned from purplish gray to yellow with cirrus wisps like torn vermilion chiffon.

  Cor meum conturbatum est in me:

  et formido mortis cecidit super me. Timor et tremor venerunt super me:

  et contexerunt me tenebrae. Et dixit: Quis dabit mihi pennas sicut columbae,

  et volabo, et requiescam!

  Her head sank upon her breast and tears fell onto the white homespun of her habit. From the next rider ahead of her came a quiet laugh.

  "Interesting that you pray in a dead language. Still, I daresay we could all do with a bit of Psalm Fifty-Five."

  She looked up. It was a man in a Tyrolean hat, turned partway around in his saddle and smiling at her.

  He declaimed: " 'My heart is sore pained within me! And the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fear and trembling have seized me, and darkness has overwhelmed me. And I said: O that I had wings like a dove! For then I would fly away and be at rest.' . . . What's next?"

  She said miserably, "Ecce elongavi fugiens: et mansi in solitudine."

  "Oh, yes. 'Lo, I would flee far away and live in the wilderness.' " He waved a hand at the emergent landscape. "And here it is! Magnificent. Just look at those mountains in the east. They're the Jura. Amazing the difference six million years makes in them, you know. Some of those ridges must be at three thousand meters, perhaps twice at high as the Jura of our time."

  Amerie wiped her eyes on her scapular. "You knew them?"

  "Oh, yes. I was very keen. Tramped and climbed all over the Earth, but liked the Alps best. I'd planned to climb them again in their juvenile aspect. My reason for coming to Exile, you see. In my last rejuv, I had my lung capacity upped twenty percent. Had the heart and large muscles fortified as well. I'd brought all kinds of special climbing gear along. D'you know, parts of the Pliocene Alps might be higher than the Himalaya we knew? Our Alps were greatly eroded by the Ice Age that'll be along in a few million years. The really high country would be farther south, around Monte Rosa on the old Swiss-Italian border, or southwest into Provence where the Dent Blanche nappe overrides Rosa's. There could be folds down there pushed above nine thousand meters. There could be a mountain higher than Everest! I hoped to spend the rest of my life climbing these Pliocene mountains. Even the Alpine Everest, if I managed to find a few kindred souls to accompany me."

  "Perhaps you still will." The nun tried to force a smile.

  "Not friggerty likely," he replied cheerily. "These exotics and their flunkies will put me to work hewing wood or drawing water when they find out that my only talents are classical donning and falling off alps. If I'm lucky and have any spare time after slavery, I'll tootle tunes for drinks in the local equivalent of the village pub."

  He apologized for interrupting her prayers and turned forward again. In a few moments, Amerie heard the soft sounds of his flute mingling with the birdsong.

  She resumed her own quiet chanting.

  The caravan was on a downhill slope once more, still traveling northward parallel to the Saône. The great river was invisible, but its course was marked by a wide belt of mist-hung forest far down in the valley. The countryside beyond the woodland on the opposite
bank was much flatter, a prairie dotted with trees that gradually blended into a marshy plain with many small meres and sloughs that sparkled as the sun climbed. Tributary streams twisted through the eastern swamp; but the west bank of the Saône that they traveled was several hundred meters higher, cut only by widely separated creeks and gullies, which the patient chalikos plodded across while scarcely breaking stride.

  Now that it was fully light, Amerie could see the other people in the train, the soldiers and Epone riding three or four ranks ahead, the pairs of prisoners strung out behind at neatly maintained intervals. Richard and Claude were near the baggage animals and the rear guard. The outriding amphicyons galumphed stoically on either side, sometimes closing in, so that she saw their evil yellow eyes or smelled the carrion reek of their bodies. The chalikos had their own distinctive smell, odd and sulfurous, like a flatus of turnips. It must be from the roots they eat, she thought wearily. All that food that made them so big and strong and wide.

  She groaned and tried to ease her tormented muscles. Nothing helped, not even prayer. Fac me tecum pie flere, Crucifixo condolere, donee ego vexero. Oh, shit, Lord. This isn't going to work.

  "Look, Amerie! Antelopes!"

  Felice was awake, pointing to the savanna on their left where a golden rise of land seemed strangely overgrown with dark stalks that waved in all directions. Then Amerie realized that the stalks were horns and the entire hillside was thick with reddish-tawny bodies. Thousands upon thousands of gazelles were grazing the dried grass. They were undisturbed by the passing caravan and raised mild black-and-white faces, seeming to nod their lyre-shaped horns at the amphicyons, which ignored them.

  "Aren't they beautiful?" cried Felice. "And over there! Those little horses!"

  Hipparions were even more numerous than the gazelles, roaming the uplands in huge loose herds that sometimes seemed to cover an entire square kilometer. As the party of travelers came into lower elevations where the vegetation was more lush, they saw other grazers, goatlike tragocerines with mahogany coats, larger harnessed antelopes that had thin white stripes on their fawn sides, and once in a scrubby little grove of acacias, massive gray-brown elands bearing stout spiraling horns, the bulls, with their drooping dewlaps, standing over two meters tall at the shoulder.