The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage

by Philip José Farmer

  ‘Perhaps not,’ The Shemibob said. ‘You might have eaten so much of your world that it wouldn’t have had enough mass to attract you. You’d have floated away from your world, floated for ever through space. Or until you were drawn to a large mass, another planetoid or planet or star. Or, finally, by the rush of all matter towards a common centre.’

  Sloosh took his prism and held it up against the trunk of a giant tree. Deyv watched from under his shoulder. It was fascinating for a while to watch the many strange designs forming within the crystal. He grew tired of that eventually and wandered off. But when the plant-man came back to camp, Deyv asked him what he had heard from the vegetable kingdom.

  ‘My people have moved now,’ he said. ‘They, too, are seeking a gateway. In fact, the very one we’re looking for. But they’re taking their time. We’ll get there long before they do.’

  ‘Why have they suddenly got off their leafy butts?’ Deyv asked.

  ‘Because they’ve realized that they have not much time left. By that, I mean their time. It would seem a long time to you. Anyway, I told them that I’d be pleased to join them. I mentioned I might be bringing along some rather interesting sentients.’

  Deyv was surprised. ‘You mean you were talking to them? I didn’t see you doing anything but viewing the designs.’

  ‘I was sending electrical analogues of my thoughts, the upper layer of them, that is, through controlled pulses from my skin.’

  Deyv thought that this was wonderful until Sloosh told him that he, too, could do it. It would take him a long time to learn how, though.

  The Yawtl, hearing of this, asked Sloosh if he would teach him. The plant-man said he would be glad to. Hoozisst had also got the witch to show him how to operate his Emerald of Anticipation. He had been refused when he had asked The Shemibob to instruct him in the mysteries of the quartz sphere. Later, however, she had relented.

  Sloosh said to Deyv, ‘I would think you’d want to know all these things.’

  ‘I would if I thought it’d do me any good,’ Deyv said. ‘But Vana and I’ll be leaving you, and we: won’t be taking the devices with us. So why bother?’

  ‘Maybe The Shemibob and I will give you gifts.’

  ‘Why should you do that?’ Deyv asked, his eagerness showing.

  ‘Why indeed?’

  Deyv meant to take up the subject again soon. But after the next sleep-time, he became so interested in another matter that he forgot about it. He mentioned to Sloosh that The Shemibob had never said anything about the giant figures that floated over the equator. Had the Archkerri asked her about them?

  ‘Of course,’ Sloosh said. ‘Do you still believe that I’m lacking in that curiosity which distinguishes the sentients from the non-sentients?’

  By which he implied that if Deyv was actually sentient he was on the borderline between the have-minds and the have-not-minds. Deyv ignored that, and he asked, ‘What does she know about them?’

  ‘Nothing. She knows of their existence, but she knows no more of their origin or what they mean – if anything – than I do.’

  The plant-man continued, ‘However, we may have some answers to our questions soon. We’re approaching the area from which they emanate.’

  The Archkerri was always surprising Deyv.

  ‘How can that be? They’re coming from behind us.’

  ‘No. They’re coming from a place ahead of us. The figures you have been seeing originated there. But they’ve travelled round the planet and are now coming home.’

  ‘They’re not birds?’

  ‘I wouldn’t care to say what they are or are not until I have examined them.’

  The Shemibob produced from her bag a plate on which she could write with a slender rod. When she wanted to erase the writing, she merely pressed a little button on the side of the plate. She and Sloosh, while riding on Phemropit’s back or in camp, often discussed the characters she drew on the plate. From what Deyv overheard, they were trying to make sense out of the flying figures. They did not seem to be having any success.

  Bright sky and Dark Beast chased each other round and round. Vana swelled. The snake-centaur applied a crystal to Vana’s belly and announced that she would bear a boy. This pleased neither of the prospective parents. It was more fun guessing.

  In the meantime, the two marred their otherwise cordial intercourse by a long-lasting dispute. Who would go with whom to whose tribe?

  ‘Vana wants me to be adopted by her people, and I, naturally, want her to come to mine,’ Deyv told Sloosh. ‘Don’t you think that it’s better for everybody concerned if the husband brings his wife to his House?’

  ‘Don’t involve me in these intricate and irrational human matters,’ Sloosh said. ‘However, I can’t resist a problem. It seems to me that there are three ways to solve this.

  ‘One, you two can go into the jungle and see who catches the other. The loser goes off willy-nilly to the tribe of the other. That’s the way you usually settle these matters, isn’t it?

  ‘Two, you get your two tribes to become one people, merge. Though I suppose that’d cause other problems, as the solving of one problem usually does. There’d be the question of which language would be used. But if they agreed to use a Trade Language, then that’d be solved.

  ‘Three, you could throw a stick up in the air, and if the end you pick strikes first, then she goes with you. Or vice versa. Personally, I think number two’s the best.’

  Deyv told Vana of his conversation. She thought that number three was the best and by far the quickest.

  ‘You’re not a good loser,’ Deyv said. Hastily, seeing her anger, he added, ‘Neither am I. Forget it.’

  The Shemibob applied her crystal to Vana’s belly again. After reading the designs in it, she said, ‘The baby will come in exactly the time it will take for three more circuits of The Dark Beast and one sleep-time.’

  Deyv forgot his resentment towards Vana and moved to embrace her. At that moment, a severe quake struck. He waited until it and succeeding, though lesser, tremors had passed. He took her in his arms and said that it would be the happiest moment of his life when the baby was born.

  ‘That makes me happy, knowing that,’ Vana said. ‘Now, if only -’

  ‘If only what?’

  She did not reply, but both knew.

  The Dark Beast completed two more circuits. It was in the sky a third time, almost upon the travellers, when Sloosh said that they were about a hundred miles from the source of the flying figures. All they had to do was to travel fifty more miles on the highway and then turn right for fifty more. With luck they would come to a junction where a highway would go in the desired direction. If not, then they would have to cross the heavily forested mountainous area.

  They were near a steep mountain on their left when Sloosh announced this. On their right was a hilly area. Sloosh paused, then said, ‘Deyv, Vana, will you be leaving us? Or will you go with us to the source?’

  ‘If you’re returning to this highway, we might as well go with you,’ Deyv said. ‘It won’t hurt to waste more time, we’ve been gone so long now. Besides, I’d feel safer if Phemropit and the rest of you were with us. It won’t be easy for just the two of us to take care of a baby without protection.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ Vana said. ‘But you might have asked what I thought before you spoke.’

  ‘Woman,’ Deyv said, ‘we’re in trouble. The ways of your tribe are just too different from my tribe’s. Among my people, certain things are women’s and others are men’s. But in cases like these, it is up to the man to make the decision.’

  Vana opened her mouth to reply. She may even have uttered a word. If she did, it was lost in the sudden rumble, followed by a great noise as if the world had cracked. In fact, that was what had happened, though locally. One of the bellowing rifts opened up directly below the road on which they had paused for a moment. The highway dropped for a foot, then the hanging section began to stretch. At the same time, it swayed from side to side.
They felt as if they were on a suspension bridge over an abyss, a bridge pushed by a high wind. It rocked back and forth and sagged as they scrambled, screaming, for the edges of the sudden cliffs.

  Phemropit, which had been on the outer lane, did not move for a moment. It probably was not immediately aware of the situation. But its sensors told it that it was in danger of falling off, and its tracks began turning. Too late. Its enormous weight bent the rubbery material to one side, and it slid off. Its tracks still turning, it disappeared into the gap.

  Deyv was vaguely aware of this but only because he happened to look behind him for a second. He was busy trying to keep Vana and himself from sliding off. They were, fortunately, in the middle of the highway when the quake struck. They had been hurled onto their faces when the rift opened, but they struggled up onto their hands and knees and crawled towards the ground. It was not solid; it was bouncing like the breast of a running woman. But whatever small refuge it offered, it was better than dropping into the chasm.

  To their right was a roar that drowned the ground-rumble. The side of the mountain was sliding towards them, the soil, the trees, the huge boulders.

  He shouted at Vana to hurry, but she could not have heard him. It would have made no difference. She was going as fast as she could.

  Jum leaped past them, his mouth open as if he were howling. Something touched Deyv’s ankle. Sloosh, he supposed. The Shemibob was almost to the edge of the abyss. He did not know where Aejip, the Yawtl, the witch and her daughter were. At the moment, he was not the least concerned about them. All he wanted was to get himself and his mate to safety. If they went down, three lives would be lost. The baby’s might be destroyed anyway, since Vana had been propelled forward hard upon her belly.

  They were ten feet away from the edge when The Shemibob ran back onto the hanging part to help them. Her forty legs moved swiftly; her front part was stretched out so far that she used her arms as legs. When she got to them, he cried something, it did not matter what, and she grabbed Vana. Then, rising with her in her arms, she turned, almost fell over to one side, righted herself, and sped away with her burden.

  Deyv crawled sobbing after her. She put the woman down on the ground, and she came back for him. Instead of trying to pick him up, she held out a hand. He seized it, felt a grip as mighty as the plant-man’s, and was lifted up and over her head, her back arcing backward. He thought his arm had been jerked out of its socket. He fell screaming with pain, almost striking Vana. The impact knocked him half-senseless, and for a while he did not know who he was or what was happening around him.

  He was aware, though, when The Shemibob hoisted him up under one arm and Vana under the other and began running towards the jungle, away from the mountain. Something huge and dark rolled by them. A boulder. Then it stopped, and he was being carried past it.

  By then, so he was told later, the tremors had ceased. But the avalanche pouring down the moutainside was shivering the ground. Despite this, the snake-centaur managed to stay on her feet – a good thing she had so many of them – and to get them to the edge of the jungle. Trees lay across each other or leaned at different angles. Here; and there were some small boulders that had rolled or leaped across the highway and crashed into the bushes or the trees. The Shemibob deposited them behind a rock and then turned to see what had happened to the others.

  Deyv had got most of his wits back, but he wished he had not. His right shoulder and his left leg hurt very much. He groaned, then asked, ‘Why did she throw me?’

  Vana said in a dull voice, ‘Because she had to. You would have been hit by a flying boulder. As it was, the impact almost bounced her off into the hole.’

  ‘Aejip and Sloosh?’

  ‘The Archkerri was almost hurled off when that boulder shot away like a stone from a sling,’ The Shemibob said. ‘But he didn’t fall, and he’s somewhere near us. The others are safe, too. Except, I regret to say, Phemropit. Jowanarr is also down in the chasm. She almost made it, but the side of the highway dipped too far. And she fell.’

  She peered through the dust that was beginning to settle around them. By then, the avalanche had spent its fury, Deyv heard a faint wail, and he asked, ‘Who’s crying?’

  The Shemibob said, ‘Feersh. She’s wandering around stumbling over rocks and tree branches, and if she doesn’t stop she’ll fall into the chasm, too.’

  Vana asked, ‘How could she have survived?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ The Shemibob said. ‘Her daughter must have pointed her in the right direction. Certainly, the Yawtl wouldn’t have helped her.’

  She reared up even further, and she shouted, ‘Hoozisst, you thief! Bring that bag to me!’

  She muttered, ‘I left the bag by the edge. Would you believe it, that greedyguts walked across the highway while it was still swinging and came back with my bag. He was going to run off with it!’

  Presently, the Yawtl, grinning slyly, came to her and handed her the bag.

  ‘I was saving it for you, O Shemibob.’

  ‘Sure you were,’ she said, smiling savagely. ‘So why didn’t you look for me?’

  ‘I was just going to put it in a safe place.’

  ‘Which is where it is now. Do you really think you could get away with it? Go and bring that poor blind woman here before she steps over the edge.’

  ‘I’d rather lead her onto thin air,’ Hoozisst said. ‘I owe her a death.’

  ‘Get her!’ The Shemibob said sternly.

  Apparently, Hoozisst wasted no time in telling Feersh that her daughter was dead. She came to them wailing even more loudly, though whether because she felt grief for Jowanarr or for her worsened plight, no one knew.

  Presently, Sloosh, followed by the two animals, came to the boulder. He said, ‘It was fortunate that I’d not had the cube unstrapped from my back. I was just about to ask for it to be taken off when the quake struck.’

  Jum, knowing that his master was in pain, whined while licking his face. Aejip lay down by Vana but rose a moment later and moved away. Sloosh said, ‘What’s the matter, Vana?’

  ‘The Shemibob was wrong,’ she said, her face grim with pain. ‘My time has come sooner than she predicted.’

  39

  While Sloosh straightened Deyv’s leg and then set it with two long splints of wood, The Shemibob helped Vana. The baby came swiftly, impelled by the shock of the earthquake and its mother’s narrow escape from death. He was rather small but healthy, and after The Shemibob had cleaned him and wrapped him in a cloth from her bag, she put him in Vana’s arms. Sloosh unfolded the vessel so that mother and child would have a warm, comfortable and safe place to rest. Vana herself carried the baby into it, but she reeled with weakness. Deyv gave his breechclout to The Shemibob, who washed it and, after it had dried, used it as a nappy for the baby.

  The Yawtl went out to peel bark off an utrighmakl tree to make bark-fibre cloths. It was not his custom to serve others; he must have thought that he might get back into the good graces of The Shemibob by being useful. The work also took him away from her. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ was an ancient proverb that still applied.

  Both Deyv and Vana ate and drank much and spent time directing their healing substances, Vana to her torn tissues and Deyv to his broken bone and swollen muscles. Vana also began nursing the baby.

  Other weaker tremors came, and the vessel was lifted into the air an inch or so a dozen times, but the shocks were of little consequence. Hoozisst, in the midst of treating the bark, found time to make a crutch for Deyv. It was shortly after this that Deyv and Vana were called from the vessel. He hobbled on the crutch; she carried the baby against her breast.

  Sloosh had summoned them to see a pool of some silvery stuff that had filled the fissures. It was, Sloosh said, a liquid metal, no doubt made by the ancients. It must have been in a huge container or containers which had been long-buried by accumulating dust or washdowns from the mountains. Or perhaps by a cataclysm. In any event, the containers had ruptured, and now the liqu
id was seeping out.

  Sloosh did not have to point out the strange qualities of the liquid metal. In the fissure into which Phemropit had fallen the stuff was flowing over its edges. And there on its surface bobbed boulders, large and small. And Phemropit and dead Jowanarr.

  ‘Stay upwind of it,’ the Archkerri said.

  He indicated a large bird that was also floating on the shiny grey surface.

  ‘It flew over and then dropped as if shot. The metal, if it is metal, gives off poisonous vapours.’

  Though he was standing twenty feet away, Deyv could smell a bitter odour. It caught at his throat and made his eyes water.

  The Shemibob brought out a rope from her bag, a thin gossamer material through which the light shone. She attached a stone to one end of the rope with a sticky stuff.

  ‘To give it weight,’ she explained.

  Then, holding her breath, she ran near the edge of the fissure. She cast the rope out with such accuracy that the stone landed on Phemropit near its snout and stuck to its surface. Immediately, she backed away, the rope running through her hands. When she stopped, Sloosh got in front of her, his great hands closing around the rope. They pulled together, and the stone-metal creature turned its nose towards the edge. At The Shemibob’s command, the Yawtl left his bark pounding to help pull. All three, tugging hard, slowly drew Phemropit along the side: of the fissure.

  By then the silvery liquid metal had drained off Phemropit’s detector and ray holes. It flashed that it was aware of what they were doing. The Shemibob used her light-device to tell it that when it was over the highway, it must use its tracks to help itself off. The creature replied that it had already thought of that.

  Though the rubbery material of the highway had sagged, it had started to contract in order to shorten itself. Most of it was floating on the silvery liquid, but a section was still curved underneath. This arc was near the other side of the fissure, downwind. Those hauling Phemropit could not go to that side to pull the creature over the part under the surface. They had to strain to drag it over the end of the ‘bridge’ nearest them until its weight forced the highway down.