The Wanderers

by Kate Ormand

  “You should have been one of the negotiators, Hawkerman!” the visitors insisted. “No one barters better.”

  He had the same kind of answer every time. “One on one, maybe. I stick to what I know. I spent a lifetime getting good at it. These people who want to be some kind of figure, they’re putting themselves in the way of grief.”

  Essa’s foster parents sought her out. They were escorted in by a swaggering band of Cruisers bringing gifts to Hawkerman from Frumitch, who had a well-developed eye for the politic move. Already Bonix had chosen his own future—to work for the rest of his life restoring Arcone to its former perfection. He had little to say to Essa, guilty he had not visited his adopted daughter in her time of trial. The closest he came to indicating that she still had a place in his household was when he mumbled, “If we all work together, things can be restored to how they were. We must be thankful the main cooling unit was undamaged.”

  It was left to Marran to say, “You must choose your own destiny, Elessa. I will support you in whatever choice you make.”

  Essa had been grateful and had hugged her; and had felt at the same time more apart from her than ever before. It couldn’t be helped.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said to Hawkerman.

  The team leader deliberated. “You’re welcome to stay. For now. We’ll be heading out some time, and then, well, we’d have to think again.”

  “Maybe I should go back to Arcone …”

  She made it a half question. She had not yet seen the city in its semidemolished state and had no desire to, either, so she was glad when he said simply, “You can’t ever go back to the Pyramid. You’re known as someone who helped smash it. There’s plenty would kill you for that—after they told you some fine words about justice, of course.”

  There was no news about Grollat. Kean and Essa had been the last people to set eyes on him, shortly after he had advised the Council that the day was lost and they should seek terms. He was almost certainly dead.

  When the idea came to her, Essa acted on it. The unfathomable Commander had approved of her determination to learn about the history of Arcone, she believed. His halfway decent treatment of her was not just the product of losing a daughter, or because something in her rebellious nature had appealed to him. She made it her business to act as the clearing center for any of the records that might be found from the Archive. While the historians in Arcone gathered any found by Bleachers, Wanderers brought others to Essa, at Hawkerman’s request. The piece of paper she had rescued had been totally mesmerizing—to her, anyway. So far she had showed it only to Kean, and his reaction had disappointed her.

  “So?” he had said.

  Only one other paper item was found and brought to her. The protective film on it had taken a beating and, torn and sodden, it revealed little to Essa. It was a picture with part of a printed caption still legible. “Mid-Season Surprise!” it read. The lettering was very regular, archaic, many centuries old. The picture seemed to be of large men wearing helmets, struggling together on a field. As far as she could see, it had nothing at all to do with the Season; it reminded her most of one of the warlike games played in the Pyramid. Keep-Ball, maybe. In a subheading on the paper, you could just make out the words “Giants Take A Tumble.” Giants? The men looked big, yes, but giants? No one believed in giants. Maybe there had once been a race of bigger men and women, out beyond the valley. Strong enough to live somewhere among the gray wastes, maybe. The infuriatingly incomprehensible picture only made her more aware of her ignorance.

  Driven by this frustration, she took a shortcut. She asked Hawkerman to get a message to Veramus, if he was still alive.

  He was, and as anxious to keep out of trouble as usual. What he actually heard from Hawkerman was that his life was under threat if he did not cooperate with Essa, and the apprentice historian believed it, for unsolved murders were taking place daily in this time of turmoil, when men settled old scores with little fear of retribution. He diligently copied out and sent to Essa some of the information she was looking for to fill gaps in her knowledge. It wasn’t much; most of the contents of the Archive were lost forever, scattered to the four corners of the valley and beyond.

  When the Season calmed down, Hawkerman was off, taking only Kean and Wil with him. As far as he was concerned, it was business as usual, and he wanted to be the first to get to Skyfly’s base in the Rocks. Not only had Skyfly parted him from a large quantity of valuable trading goods, but there was the rest of the flier’s hoard somewhere up there. They hauled the trailer out of the Lakes in near-perfect traveling conditions, wet yet temperate, and despite being short-handed, made good time.

  Without Skyfly, the balloon settlement was a horrifying scene. His goods were wind-scattered all over the area, and the deformed and hopeless who had been his followers were decimated by starvation and natural wastage of other kinds. Sickness and the big cats had accounted for some, and internal disputes had killed more, and there was one other, more sinister reason for the demise of several.

  Spitless was still there, the only one who had made any attempt to make himself a power base, persuading two or three others to become his adherents. This group was better fed than the others.

  Among the goods bartered for the balloon flight was the big ski they had found when Joe had been attacked by the Long Ones. When Spitless tried to trade with Hawkerman for this and certain other articles he especially prized, he was told, “These things were Skyfly’s, and he’s gone. Now they’re mine again.”

  In the night, Hawkerman shot and killed Spitless and another man. Kean was astounded by the action until Hawkerman told him, “They had a little secret of good health. I came up on them when they were eating. It wasn’t charjaw and it wasn’t cats, and it once walked on two legs.”

  It was good to leave. Hawkerman was disappointed by the whole endeavor, and fretful. “We need to get our hands on some plastics. That’s the substance that’s going to be in demand.”

  He made them dig a cache for most of the things they had taken, some twenty miles from the Lakes. “No one’s going to prospect this close to home. These items will have more value when things settle down.”

  And they dragged the near-empty trailer back to base. The other teams looked at them with sympathy. “Got nothing for your troubles? Isn’t that the way it goes.”

  At last Essa had the story of Arcone’s early days, and her mind was at rest. She knew something of what had happened and how the valley had come to be as it was. Wailing Joe had proved an ally and a good listener.

  One calm night, two days after the team was reunited, he announced, “Elessa is going to speak.”

  Supper was over, and the team was together. Hawkerman, Cara, Wil, Barb, and Kean. Wailing Joe had invited many of his acquaintances among the Wanderers to come and learn what for hundreds of years had been Arcone’s most closely guarded secrets. On this one occasion, Hawkerman had allowed them to build a big fire, so the scene was brightly lit.

  Essa started off much too formally. “I had always wondered about the history of Arcone. About how the Pyramid began. After all, wouldn’t we all like to know how we got here?” It did not sound at all like her, and she found herself stammering like Veramus. “It wasn’t p-permitted to know these things, and that just made me want to know even more.”

  “All you got to do is tell the story,” Wailing Joe advised with a kind of grandfatherly pride. “It’s a beauty,” he told the audience. “Needs a song. I’m working on one.”

  So she told them what she had learned, secrets previously known only to the Bleacher aristocracy.

  Many hundreds of years ago, a great civilization had been brought to its knees by a great natural catastrophe. This had triggered a whole series of lesser disasters, equally mysterious, though some must have been manmade. There was cataclysmic war, and sickness and drought ravaged the lands. Among those who had not contracted disease, the fittest were sent to build a haven in some environment where their infant young
might be protected from ill health, securing the continuance of the society. It was hoped that genetic experiments would produce a race better able to survive in the increasingly hard climate. After a long march and many tribulations, the valley—“The Gentle Valley”—was chosen for its water supply, and the haven was constructed, a giant pyramid they had brought with them in prefabricated sections. But the once-magnificent civilization was breaking up too fast. Marauding bands attacked the Pyramid and were beaten off, until there came an army of vandals who could not be so easily withstood. At the last, the entire adult population sealed their young children within the Pyramid and ventured out for the final battle. The defenders used chemical weapons. All perished, both the marauders and the virtuous. The last of these died within sight of the Pyramid, unwilling to venture back inside in case they spread pestilence among their children.

  Over the next years in Arcone, the children grew up without tutelage. They fought among themselves as they grew to adulthood, and massive damage was done within the Pyramid. Most of the written records were destroyed. Finally there emerged a dictator among the young people, who killed those that would not follow him and drove their children out into the increasingly barren valley. This was Austan the Great. He decreed that those who remained were the Chosen Ones, whose destiny it was to preserve the Pyramid that had been bequeathed to them. Only Austan’s inner circle knew that during the lawless times, the true history of their people had been all but destroyed, and in later years, only the Prime Conscience was allowed to view the few remaining fragments of the original records. It was said that none that saw them could ever again know true peace of mind.

  “See—see?” Wailing Joe crowed. “I always knew it—we’re just the same as they are!”

  “Well, we all knew that,” Hawkerman said with a small smile.

  “But what we didn’t know,” Essa said loudly above the buzz of conversation that had started, “what we didn’t know before was that the Arconians—I mean, the Bleachers—they didn’t create the Pyramid. All they’ve done is look after it and kind of worship it. The things they can do that you can’t, they learned from experimenting with what wasn’t destroyed after all the elders died. No wonder they made so many disfigured people—they never really understood anything about the science of making people stronger!”

  Kean had been spending much of his time scavenging for food for the team and had not heard all of the story Essa was relating. The truth was that he had feelings for her, and had neither the experience to cope with them nor any wish to express them. So he dealt with the problem by avoiding her as much as possible. He did know about something she had not yet spoken of, though.

  “Tell them about the other pyramid,” he said eagerly, excited by the excitement of those around him.

  “Yes,” Essa said. She had the priceless pieces of paper in a plastic envelope now, and carried it everywhere with her. Carefully she drew it out.

  “We found this in the Archive—where they kept all the records. If you want to look at it, you’ll have to come up one by one. It’s very precious.”

  They lined up to lay eyes on the paper she held out, and many gasped when they had. Essa kept talking.

  “The old civilization took its history with it. Only just like so much else, most of it was lost in the times of anarchy in the Pyramid, when no one was interested in learning. There are only a few fragments left, and this is one of them—a page from a document about our Pyramid. You’ll see a picture of another pyramid on it, and it’s not made of plastics. It’s a place, the writing says, that was the model for our Pyramid. It’s called Snefru’s Bent Pyramid at Dahshur. I don’t know who he was or where that is. But Arcone was originally called something else.” She enunciated carefully: “Ark One.”

  As each Wanderer came to the front, where the firelight shone on Essa and her find, he or she saw the top page from a presentational document. It was headed with the words “The Semipermanent Ark One: Design and Build by Gonzales-Kovac Inc.” Beneath that was an exploded diagram of the proposed structure, and beneath that a headline: “Fired by the Past, We Forge a Future.”

  And at the bottom of the page was the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur, a massive artifact emerging from a desert landscape as if it were growing from it.

  Hawkerman stood up. He had not exhibited any interest in Essa’s historical research until this moment. As a man of consequence, the Wanderers let him through to the front. He stared at the picture of the ancient pyramid for some time, seeing its strength and potency, and then turned and walked back to where he had been sitting.

  Essa said, “Our Pyramid was just a place to live in when it was built. It wasn’t a grand city. Nobody knew what Arcone meant, because it doesn’t mean anything.”

  Hawkerman said softly to Kean, “That other place … that’s something I would like to have seen.”

  Kean said, “Maybe it’s still there, somewhere.”

  TWENTY

  Essa sat hunched against the heat of the sun, her big Voyager hat low over her eyes, tending the metal cooking pot by her feet. She felt sure she was cooking faster than the greenback stew. If she looked up, what would she see after her eyes had grown used to the glare? Nothing but dusty brown everywhere; not a tree, not a shrub, not even an insect. Her mouth and lips were parched and painful as they had been for days now, and Hawkerman’s orders were that she could not return inside the tent until the sun had touched the horizon. A hard taskmaster, Hawkerman. Well, if she had to, she would sit here for two days in a row, and all they would find of her would be her animal skin clothes, because the rest of her would have shriveled away.

  She had been allowed to join the team. To another Arconian, it would have been plain, unremitting toil in terrible conditions, but to Essa it was deeply satisfying to have no rules to obey but those that kept you alive. She was proud to be a member of the finest team the valley had ever known … and she was very, very thirsty.

  After the Season had finally finished in that abrupt way it had, as though it had been insulted and couldn’t stay another moment, the sun had worked its usual trick of baking the muddy earth into brown concrete. It was amazing how the desert blooms had the strength to pierce it with their delicate stems. Then the topsoil had turned to dust, and the flowers had wilted, and the valley was back to normal.

  Except around the Pyramid and the Lakes. Hawkerman had been right when he had said it was dangerous to be a “figure.” Nastor had died in his sleep of some digestive disorder not too many weeks after the final agreement had been reached, and there were whispers of poisoning and further whispers that it was his own historians who had been responsible. About Frumitch, there were more than whispers. Both Wanderers and Cruisers spoke openly of his swollen ego and their doubt that he had struck a hard enough bargain with the defeated Bleachers. “Paid off,” they said angrily. “Sold out.”

  The valley had lost hundreds of its population in the battle and the ensuing brutality. The eternal survivor, Wailing Joe, had words to say about that. Much against his will, he had been retired by Hawkerman to a relatively comfortable life at the Lakes. He said, “Fact is, it was needed. A general bloodletting is the kind of thing you need every hundred years or so. Cuts the number of mouths.” Then he went back to composing his epic song about the valley’s history. The last verse was going to be about the famous Wanderer victory at the Pyramid.

  Besides Essa, Hawkerman had not yet taken on any new team members. The atmosphere in the team had changed because of the losses it had suffered. Wil, for instance. He had never been able to talk, and now he managed somehow to be quieter still. And then sometimes you would come across him making strained whispers and gurgles in his throat and smiling, and you knew he was talking to his dead sibling again. Barb took the loss of her man badly; her mouth was set hard, and you could feel the anger in her. Some nights, as they traveled, she would speak to Kean about Ax, and talk of his deeds and the ways that made him so special. Kean listened and said little, and somehow pitched hi
s sympathy just right for her. It took Essa quite a while to realize that she was jealous of Barb. That came as a shock.

  She’d tried not to think of Kean in any special way before that. He was a good companion, the friend who had come to get her out of trouble, and there was an end of it—at least, that was what she had told herself.

  When the sun set, she went inside the tent and roused the team, and they brought in the food. The stew was very dry, and there was no water to drink with it. Usually Essa enjoyed the big sunset breakfast—for, as they were about to get to work, that was what it really was. There was sporadic talk, so slow and considered that you thought more deeply about even the simplest things. Tonight it was different. Hawkerman was disturbed and angry. His plan had been to go looking for the big cache he had missed last year, in which there were plenty of plastics. It was something of an obsession with him, how he had failed before, and as before, he was in a hurry.

  He said, “With a bigger team, I’d go faster.”

  Cara said mildly, “There would be more to feed and water.”

  He shot her an impatient look. “Too many women, that’s what it is. Whoever heard of a team that was half women.”

  “You picked the team,” Barb remarked. “Blame yourself.”

  “We’ll find water,” Kean said, placating Hawkerman. “We always do.”