World of Tiers 05 - The Lavalite World

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  Anana did not, of course, understand everything he said. But she could supply the meaning from what phrases she had mastered.

  She went to Urthona and asked him why he had made such an arrangement in the sea-country.

  "Primarily, for my entertainment. I liked to send my palace into that land and watch the fury of the lightning, see the devastation. I was safe and snug in my palace, but I got a joy out of seeing the lightning blaze and crack around me. Then I truly felt like a god.

  "Secondarily, if it weren't for their fear of being killed, the humans would crowd in. It'd be fun to watch them fight each other for the territory. In fact, it was fun during the stormless seasons. But if there were nothing to keep them from settling down there, they'd never go back into the shifting areas."

  "There are, if I remember correctly, twelve of those areas. The seas and the surrounding land each cover about five million square miles. So in an area of 200,000,000 square miles there are 60,000,000 square miles of relatively stable topography. These are never separated from the main mass, and the splitoffs never occur near the seas."

  "The lightning season was designed to drive beast and human out of the sea-country except at certain times. Otherwise, they'd get overcrowded."

  He stopped to point at the plain. Anana turned and saw that it was now covered with herds of animals, elephants, moosoids, antelopes, and many small creatures. The mountains were dark with birds that had settled on them. And the skies were black with millions of flying creatures.

  "They migrate from near and far," Urthona said. "They come to enjoy the sea and the wooded lands while they can. Then, when the storms start, they leave."

  Anana wandered away. As long as she didn't get very far from the camp, she was free to roam around. She approached the chief, who was sitting on the ground and striking the ground with the axe. She squatted down before him.

  "When will the storms cease?" she said.

  His eyes widened. "You have learned our language very quickly. Good. Now I can ask you some questions."

  "I asked one first," she said.

  He frowned. "The Lord should have ceased being angry and gone back to his palace before now. Usually, the lightning would have stopped two light-periods ago. For some reason, the Lord is very angry and he is still raging. I hope he gets tired of it and goes home soon. The beasts and the birds are piling up. It's a dangerous situation. If a stampede should start, we could be trampled to death. We would have to jump into the water to save ourselves, and that would be bad because our grewigg would be lost along with our supplies."

  Grewigg was the plural ofgregg, the word for a moosoid.

  Anana said, "I wondered why you weren't hunting when so many animals were close by."

  The chief, Trenn, shuddered. "We're not stupid. Now, what tribe is yours? And is it near here?"

  Anana wondered if he would accept the truth. After all, his tribe, the Wendow, might have a tradition of having come from another world.

  "We are not natives of this ... place." She waved a hand to indicate the universe, and the flies, alarmed, rose and whirled around buzzing. They quickly settled back, however, lighting on her body, her face, and her arms. She brushed

  them away from her face. The chief endured the insects crawling all over him and into his empty eye-socket. Possibly, he wasn't even aware of them.

  "We came through a ..." She paused. She didn't know the word for gate. Maybe there wasn't any. "We came through a pass between two ... I don't know how to say it. We came from beyond the sky. From another place where the sky is ... the color of that bird there."

  She pointed to a small blue bird which had landed by the channel.

  The chiefs eye got even larger. "Ah, you came from the place where our ancestors lived. The place from which the Lord drove our forefathers countless light-periods ago because they had sinned. Tell me, why did the Lord drive you here, too? What did you do to anger him?"

  While she was trying to think how to answer this, the chief bellowed for the shaman, Shakann, to join them. The little gray-bearded man, holding the gourd at the end of a stick to which feathers were tied, came running. Trenn spoke too rapidly for Anana to understand any but a few words. Shakann squatted down by the chief.

  Anana considered telling them that they'd entered this world accidentally. But she didn't know their word for accident. In fact, she doubted there was such. From what she'd learned from Nurgo, these people believed that nothing happened accidentally. Events were caused by the Lord or by witchcraft.

  She got an inspiration. At least, she hoped it was. Lying might get her into even worse trouble. Ignorant of the tribe's theology, she might offend some article of belief, break some tabu, say something contrary to dogma.

  "The Lord was angry with us. He sent us here so that we might lead some deserving tribe, yours, for instance, out of this place. Back to the place where your ancestors lived before they were cast out."

  There was a long silence. The chief looked as if he were entertaining joyful thoughts. The shaman was frowning.

  Finally, the chief said, "And just how are we to do this? If the Lord wants us to return to sembart ..."

  "What is sembart?"

  The chief tried to define it. Anana got the idea that sembart could be translated as paradise or the garden of Eden. In any event, a place much preferable to this world.

  Well, Earth was no paradise, but, given her choice, she wouldn't hesitate a second in making it.

  "If the Lord wants us to return to sembart, then why didn't he come here and take us to there?"

  "Because," Anana said, "he wanted me to test you. If you were worthy, then I would lead you from this world."

  Trenn spoke so rapidly to Shakann that she could comprehend only half of his speech. The gist, however, was that the tribe had made a bad mistake in not treating the captives as honored guests. Everybody had better jump to straighten out matters.

  Shakann, however, cautioned him not to act so swiftly. First, he would ask some questions.

  "If you are indeed the Lord's representative, why didn't you come to us in his shelbett?"

  A shelbett, it turned out, was a thing that flew. In the old days, according to legend, the Lord had traveled through the air in this.

  Anana, thinking fast, said, "I only obey the Lord. I dare not ask him why he does or doesn't do this or that. No doubt, he had his reasons for not giving us a shelbett. One might be that if you had seen us in one, you would have known we were from him. And so you would have treated us well. But the Lord wants to know who is good and who isn't."

  "But it is not bad to take captives and then kill them or adopt them into the tribe. So how could we know that we were doing a bad thing? All tribes would have treated you the same."

  Anana said, "It's not how you treated us at first. How you treated us when you found out that we came from the Lord will determine whether you are found good or bad in his eyes."

  Shakann said, "But any tribe that believed your story would honor you and take care of you as if you were a baby. How would you know whether a tribe was doing this because it is good or because it is pretending to be good from fear of you?"

  Anana sighed. The shaman was an ignorant savage. But he was intelligent.

  "The Lord has given me some powers. One of them is the ability to look into the ..."

  She paused. What was the word for heart?

  "To look inside people and see if they are good or bad. To tell when people are lying."

  "Very well," Shakann said. "If you can indeed tell when a person lies, tell me this. I intend to take this sharp hard thing the chief took from you and split your head open. I will do it very shortly. Am I lying or am I telling the truth?"

  The chief protested, but Shakann said, "Wait!

  This is a matter for me, your priest, to decide. You rule the tribe in some things, but the business of the Lord is my concern."

  Anana tried to appear cool, but she could feel the sweat pouring from her.

 
; Judging from the chiefs expression, she doubted that he would let the shaman have the axe. Also, the shaman must be unsure of himself He might be a hypocrite, a charlatan, though she did not think so. Preliterate medicine men, witches, sorcerers, whatever their title was, really believed in their religion. Hyprocisy came with civilization. His only doubt was whether or not she did indeed represent the Lord of this wretched cosmos. If she were lying and he allowed her to get away with it, then the Lord might punish him.

  He was in as desperate a situation as she. At least, he thought he was.

  The issue was: was he lying or did he really intend to test her by trying to kill her? He knew that if she were what she said she was, he might be blasted with a bolt from the sky.

  She said, "You don't know yourself whether you're lying or telling the truth. You haven't made up your mind yet what you'll do."

  The shaman smiled. She relaxed somewhat.

  "That is right. But that doesn't mean that you can see what I'm thinking. A very shrewd person could guess that I felt that way. I'll ask you some more questions.

  "For instance, one of the things that makes me think you might be from the Lord is that thing which cut the men and the grewigg in half. With it he could have killed the whole tribe. Why, then, did he throw it away after killing only a few?"

  "Because the Lord told him to do so. He was to use the deadly gift of the Lord only to show you that he did not come from this world. But the Lord did not want him to slay an entire tribe. How then could we lead you out of this place to sembart?"

  "That is well spoken. You may indeed be what you say. Or you might just be a very clever woman. Tell me, how will you lead us to sembart!"

  Anana said, "I didn't say I will. I said I might. What happens depends upon you and the rest of your tribe. First, you have to cut our bonds and then treat us as vicars of the Lord. However, I will say this. I will guide you to the dwelling palace of the Lord. When we get to it, we'll enter it and then go through a pass to sembart."

  The shaman raised thick woolly eyebrows. "You know where the Lord's dwelling is?"

  She nodded. "It's far away. During the journey, you will be tested."

  The chief said, "We saw the dwelling of the Lord once countless light periods ago. We were frightened when we saw it moving along a plain. It was huge and had many... um... things like great sticks ... rising from it. It shone with many lights from many stones. We watched it for a while, then fled, afraid the Lord would be offended and deal harshly with us."

  Shakann said, "What is the purpose of the thing that makes music?"

  "That will get us into the dwelling of the Lord. By the way, we call his dwelling a palace."

  "Bahdahss?"

  "That's good enough. But the ... Horn ... belongs to me. You have no right to it. The Lord won't like your taking it."

  "Here!" the chief said, thrusting it at her.

  "You wronged me when you raped me. I do not know whether the Lord will forgive you for that or not."

  The chief spread his hands out in astonishment. "But, I did no wrong! It is the custom for the chief to mount all female captives. All chiefs do it."

  Anana had counted on avenging herself some day. She hadn't known if she'd be satisfied with castrating him or also blinding him. However, if it was the custom... he really hadn't thought he was doing anything evil. And if she'd been more objective about it, she would have known that, too.

  After all, aside from making her nauseated, he hadn't hurt her. She'd suffered no psychic damage, and there wasn't any venereal disease. Nor could he make her pregnant.

  "Very well," she said. "I won't hold that against you."

  The chiefs expression said, "Why should you?" but he made no comment.

  The shaman said, "What about the two men? Are they your husbands? I ask that because some tribes, when they have a shortage of women, allow the women to have more than one husband."

  "No! They are under my command."

  She might as well get the upper hand on the two while she had the chance. Urthona would rave, but he wouldn't try to usurp her leadership. He wouldn't want to discredit her, since her story had saved his life.

  She held out her hands, and the chief used a flint knife to sever the thongs. She rose and ordered the chiefs mother to be brought to her. Thikka approached haughtily, then turned pale under the dirt when her son explained the situation to her.

  "I won't hurt you," Anana said. "I just want my jeans and boots back."

  Thikka didn't know what jeans or boots meant, so Anana used sign language. When they were off, Anana ordered her to take the jeans to the channel and wash them. Then she said, "No. I'll do it. You probably wouldn't know how."

  She was afraid the woman might find the knife.

  The chief called the entire tribe in and explained who their captives, ex-captives, really were. There were a lot of oh's and ah's, or the Wendow equivalents, and then the women who'd beaten her fell on their knees and begged forgiveness. Anana magnanimously blessed them.

  Urthona's and McKay's bonds were cut. Anana told them how she had gained their freedom. However, as it turned out, they were not as free as they wished. Though the chief gave each a moosoid, he delegated men to be their bodyguards. Anana suspected that the shaman was responsible for this.

  "We can try to escape any time there's an opportunity," she told her uncle. "But we'll be safer if we're with them while we're looking for your palace. Once we find it, if we find it, we can outwit them. However, I hope the search doesn't take too long. They might wonder why the emissaries of the Lord are having such a hard time locating it."

  She smiled. "Oh, yes. "You're my subordinates, so please act as if you are. I don't think that shaman is fully convinced about my story."

  Urthona looked outraged. McKay said, "It looks like a good deal to me, Miss Anana. No more beatings, we can ride instead.of walking, eat plenty, and three women already said they'd like to have babies by me. One thing about them, they ain't got no color prejudice. That's about all I can say for them, though."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ANOTHER DAY AND night passed. The thunder and lightning showed no signs of diminishing. Anana, watching the inferno from the pass, could not imagine how anything, plants or animals, escaped the fury. The chief told her that only about one sixteenth of the trees were laid low and new trees grew very quickly. Many small beasts, hiding now, in burrows and caves, would emerge when the storms were over.

  By then the plains were thick with life and the mountains were zebra-striped with lines of just-arriving migrators. The predators, the baboons, wild dogs, moas, and big cats, were killing as they pleased. But the plain was getting so crowded that there was no room to stampede away from the hunters. Sometimes, the frightened antelopes and elephants ran toward the killers and trampled them.

  The valley was a babel of animal and bird cries, screams, trumpetings, buglings, croakings, bellowings, mooings, roarings.

  At this place the waterway banks were about ten feet above the surface. The ground sloped upwards from this point towards the sea-land pass where the banks reached their maximum height above the surface of the water, almost a hundred feet. The chief gave orders to abandon the moosoids and swim across the channel if a stampede headed their way. The children and women jumped into the water and swam to the opposite bank and struggled up its slope. The men stayed behind to control the nervous grewigg. These were bellowing, rolling their eyes, drawing their lips back to show their big teeth, and dancing around. The riders were busy trying to quiet them, but it was evident that if the storm didn't stop very spon, the plains animals would bolt and with them the moosoids. As it was, the riders were not far behind the beasts in nervousness. Though they knew that the lightning wouldn't reach out between the mountains and strike them, the "fact" that the Lord was working overtime in his rage made them uneasy.

  Anana had crossed the channel with the women and children. She hadn't liked leaving her gregg behind. But it was better to be here if a stampe
de did occur. The only animals on this side were those able to get up the steep banks: baboons, goats, small antelopes, foxes. There were a million birds on this side, however, and more were flying in. The squawking and screaming made it difficult to hear anyone more than five feet away even if you shouted.

  Urthona and McKay were on their beasts, since it was expected that all men would handle them. Urthona looked worried. Not because of the imminent danger but because she had the Horn. He fully expected her to run away then. There was no one who could stop her on this side of the channel. It would be impossible for anyone on the other side to run parallel along the channel with the hope of eventually cutting her off. He, or they, could never get through the herds jammed all the way from the channel to the base of the mountains.