Watson, Ian - Black Current 02

by The Book Of The Stars (v1. 1)

  And Yorp was a true native of his world.

  He gave vent to the sort of battlecry a giant male croaker might utter if in dispute over a lady monstrosity of that ilk. "Yup! Yup! Yup!" Lowering his head, and almost running on all fours, Yorp charged at Edrick.

  Edrick was taken by surprise. Yorp knocked the wind right out of him and bowled him over.

  But Yorp was of slight build here on Earth. The next boy he rushed at was forewarned, and easily clinched with him. A third boy began to thump Yorp viciously.

  With a cry of, "Come on, Gang!" I jumped to Yorp's rescue. A few flurrying moments later the whole lot of us were tangling with Echick's troops, with greater or lesser success. Ambroz surprised me with his speed and vigour. In the midst of tripping someone, he flashed me a grin: "Here's a reason for moving!"

  But Leehallee was squirming on the ground, nursing a bloody nose; and Marl wasn't doing much except flap his arms frantically. Perhaps he feared they might snap in half if he actually hit anyone.

  Edrick was up, recovering his wind.

  He jabbed a finger across the melee. "That one! Catch her, hold her! She's from our world! She's a witch!"

  I took off as fast as I could for the woods. This wasn't an act of cowardice. The odds on our gang winning the fight were lousy. At least this way—I told myself—I would lead trouble away from Leehallee and the others. Maybe they would be able to summon help.

  Supposing Edrick's arrival was a coincidence, how on Earth had he rumbled me?

  I sprinted.

  Backed up against the tree, I swung my club slowly to and fro.

  "So who's first?" I sang out to the surrounding Sons. "Come along, little boys! Can't kiss me, so you'd better kick me, eh? Truesoil is, you can't do nothing that real men can do. Can't shove your precious squirters anywhere, no more. 'Cos they're soft as worms, for ever and ever. You must be burning with frustration!"

  Enraged, one Son rushed me. I swung. Rather to my surprise my club caught him full in the mouth. Wailing and clasping his face, dribbling blood and bits of tooth (I think), he stumbled back.

  I jeered: "Ya! Ya!"

  "Yaleen, you mean!" snapped Edrick. "That's who you are! Why don't you use your full name as your warcry, Yaleen?"

  "Who's she?" I retorted.

  "She's you. Knew you were of our world, soon as you sneered at me proclaiming. " Edrick was still panting. "Nobody else would have used that word. Only in a A'tf-theodral does one proclaim." (So that was it! Me and my mouth.) "Why pretend you're an Exotic, unless you're really a witch of the east? And who's the witch of the east most likely not to want me to know her?"

  "Why would you be chasing after witches, whatever they are?" I swished my cudgel. Another Son had tensed up to spring—he untensed again. "Is the Godmind holding a witch-hunt?"

  If so, I'd be well advised to get myself killed as quickly as possible; and goodbye to any fancy notions of being nursed back to health by Loving Graces ... At least then I'd be on my way back home along the psylink to the A^-store. Perhaps, maybe.

  "I said, is the Godmind shitting bricks about witches?"

  "Blasphemer! Why should the Godmind worry about the mildew on a single leaf? Yet His dutiful gardeners will strip that leaf for Him!" (Ah, so the Godmind wasn't behind this. Back to Plan A, alas: slow torture.) "I know verily which witch you are, to speak so vilely! The Godmind will reward us, Brothers. She was an agent of the Satan-Snake until I stopped her tricks! But she evaded my questioning; and maybe those questions are still worth asking!"

  Edrick couldn't possibly suspect that I was here on Earth as an agent of the Worm. Would I be likely to babble that under torture?

  "Reward you?" I hooted. "The Godmind doesn't care a shit about you. Or about the rest of the human race!"

  Edrick spread his hands wide in appeal. "How can you call all this we see about us here in Eeden, not caring? This fulfilment of the Godmind's promises! This blessed land!"

  If only these wretched boys hadn't burst in on our brainstorming session. Ambroz had spent half his life arriving at his conclusion: the telescope theory, the construction of a A'tf-lens of galactic size.

  But could he ever prove it? Perhaps only the black current was equal to that task. . . .

  Where were my friends, anyway? Where was help?

  "How can you?" Edrick cried again and again. He seemed genuinely dismayed. Maybe he was just being rhetorical, to work himself up. "What do you mean, the Godmind doesn't care?”

  Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the matter.

  "Oh, Eeden's tidy," I said quickly, putting a sneer into my voice. "It's a lot tidier than your minds, you bunch of. . . ." And I said a rude word.

  They rushed me.

  They got on with their fun. Pretty soon I was screaming and finding how very difficult it is to faint when you really want to.

  The fact that this was only a host body they were wrecking was, believe me, no consolation. All nerve endings functioned very nicely, thank you. Nor was it of much comfort that on this occasion Edrick lacked equipment such as a fingerscrew. I won't go into what they did to me. I've no wish to relive it. Suffice it to say that what seemed like a week later ingenious new pains stopped happening, leaving only the ones already in residence to carry on. But I hadn't spoken—I'd only screeched. When the symphony of pain changed key, I thought maybe it was bonfire time. I rather hoped it was.

  A hawser squeals and groans when a boat tries to snap it in a gale. Then the gale drops and the hawser goes slack. So it was with my mind. With the decrease in the force of agony, my mind went slack at last. I faded out.

  To awaken in a bath of fire!

  No actual flames were dancing about me. The fire was inside. The fire was me, my body. The slightest movement hurt me so much I tried not to breathe; but that was impossible.

  Above: tiers of branches and blue sky. Then something bulky got in the way. A bristly muzzle dipped. Crystal mech-eyes looked into mine. A mech-deer? A mech-bear? A Loving Grace, at any rate! "They've gone," it said. "I sent them away. It is over. You will be well."

  A puff of green smoke issued from its nostrils. This time I actually felt pleasant as I conked out.

  * * *

  I spent the next three or four weeks—I wasn't sure exactly how long —lying in a tub of jelly in some underground service-chamber being repaired. Soft machines attended me. Latterly one of these asked me questions about the assault. These questions seemed aimed more at working out the hang-ups of the Sons, than in trying to uncover perfidy in me. I lied through my teeth.

  They were still the same teeth as before. I vaguely recalled that Edrick had left my mouth intact so that he could question me; the Sons had concentrated on other targets.

  Towards the end of my convalescence, Yorp and gang visited me. With the mother-hen machines present, I couldn't say much of importance. But I managed a bit, as if in private code.

  "Shame they interrupted," I said. "It was getting interesting. Telescopes, eh?"

  Ambroz, bless him, understood. 'To light the darkness."

  "And see what?"

  "To the end, and start, of everything. Why it all is. People are a way of seeing things. If you stare at the sun, you bum your eyes out; though you do see, for a little while. What if you stare at a billion billion suns at once? It's said on my world that a moment of illumination outweighs an eternity of blind ignorance. It's also said that people are the eyes of God." Ambroz grinned crookedly. "We're His pupils. Yet we taught Him to exist in the first place."

  "Excuse me," interrupted a machine. "Please clarify."

  Ambroz shrugged. "Enough said. Time to go. Mustn't tire the invalid. But first, a kiss seems to be the custom hereabouts. Oh these soft and sloppy lips!" He bent over my jelly-tub and his mouth brushed my cheek. Quickly, very quietly, he whispered, "Forget it. It doesn't matter. If our friend needs the whole galaxy as its eye, it'll take a thousand centuries yet."

  He straightened up. "Let's go," he said to Yorp.

  The cott
on-head Exotic wrapped his burnous about him. "Come along, Gang." I didn't see them again.

  A week later I was hale and hearty, up and about.

  A machine told me that I should take a tube to a certain service- hatch down south, to be sped from there to commence my cherubic duties. To be a starchild apostle, a focus of adoration. As many had been before me; so very many. I was to be routed by deep-tube under continent and ocean, to Venezia in Italia.

  * * *

  A few months later, like any good espionage agent, I was in deep with the rebel "Underground".

  Such as it was.

  Venezia is a city built in the sea. The city had drowned a millennium or more ago, but the Godmind had raised and rebuilt it. Indeed, so long ago had this happened that once again, where the tideline lapped, the city's stones were worn away like diseased teeth. Palace walls, balconies and turrets were fretted by brine spray. Before long, from the looks of it, the city would fall to pieces and sink for the second time. Though meanwhile, this vein of rot running through the fabric of Venezia seemed to make the place not moribund, but somehow more alive—like some ancient beast whose senses have sharpened amidst infirmity, who has grown subtle and tricky, and even entered on a second childhood of playfulness. And always within Venezia's sloshing foamy veins—reviving even as it destroyed—flowed the living sea.

  At least that's what I thought, to start with! It took me a while to discover the truth about all this decadent decay: which was that the Godmind had rebuilt and embalmed the whole city in exactly this latterday condition—the way some people bore phony worm-holes in a piece of new furniture. Most other ancient cities had been rebuilt pristine and brand-new; not Venezia. It was rebuilt with worm-holes; with a skin disease grafted on to its walls.

  It was one windswept early evening on the Zattere when I met Bernardino. Spray was whipping up on to that quay-road, slicking the worn stones. Clouds like enormous purple fists were punching each other landwards, over the sombre choppy waters. Blue lightning flickered out to sea. A skinny scruffy cat slunk for shelter.

  (The Zattere: I shall mention the place-names of quays and canals, arching bridges and alleys and piazzas just as though you know as much about Venezia as you know of Aladalia or Guineamoy. Venezia exists, upon the planet Earth; be assured of that.)

  Thunder growled. The Zattere was deserted . . . until a man came sneaking out of shadows. He was wearing soft shoes called sneakers, slacks, a blue jersey, a beret. Perhaps he was one of those who rowed the gondola canal-boats, stirring the water with a single oar from the stem, like a cook mixing a pudding. He had a ruddy jolly face.

  I wasn't too worried about his furtive manner. What harm could come to us starchildren? Old black-shawled women called us "little angels". Gondoliers gave us free rides to wherever, whenever we wanted. Restaurant proprietors rushed to serve us the pick of their menus. All because our eyes had seen the sunlight of another star.

  In return, we cherubs talked of our home worlds in the many "churches" of the Godmind: ornate buildings, these, full of paintings of cherubs and visions of Kas flying to and fro in the heavens, and other stuff from precog myth. We had lodgings in grand hotels, and mingled and mixed as we chose.

  In Venezia when a starchild died, he or she always received a fine send-off to the Isle of the Dead reserved for us out in the lagoon, San Michele by name. And his or her Ka flew away to the bosom of the Godmind, so it was said.

  When a starchild died—of old age, after twenty or twenty-five years of extended childhood. . . .

  That's right. Our new bodies weren't very long-lasting. The Godmind hadn't bothered to include that piece of information in the heritage of Earth; I only found this out from another cherub in the hotel where I was staying, a propos a death and a funeral. But said cherub wasn't bothered about it. "We go home to the Godmind."

  I didn't believe it.

  Oh, the twenty years bit I believed all right! But not the other.

  "Excuse, Starchild," said the man. "May I speak? I heard you speak of your world in La Salute today."

  "Oh did you? Have you been following me?"

  He grinned. "But of course! How else do we meet? Don't worry, though."

  "Why should I worry?"

  He waved an idle hand. "Oh, it's such a dingy evening! Nobody about, not even an eye of the Godmind. A storm rises. A small body might be swept off this quay."

  "Thanks a lot! I feel totally reassured."

  My curiosity was teased; and surely that was his intention. The man wasn't behaving in an unfriendly manner, but he certainly wasn't adoring me, either.

  "As a former sailor-woman," he said, "you must find life in our city very compatible, hmm? All these waterways!"

  "Oh yes, wouldn't I make a fine gondolier? Lazing around the lagoon, ferrying artichokes and whatnot. Pity about my size."

  "Yes, what a shame you can't sail boats here . . . But you never were a sailor-woman, were you? You lived on the west bank of your river. You kept well away from the water because of that thing in it which is the enemy of the Godmind, hmm? That's what you told us in church. We all know that old habits die hard—so naturally here you are hugging the waterfront!"

  Oh hell and damn it.

  The fellow chuckled. "You described your star-home in too paltry a way, you see. Not because you are poor at describing; oh no! The real reason is, you don't know quite enough about that west bank. And frankly you were more elegant in your account, poor as it was, than I could account for coming from a woman reared in such a sanctimonious pigsty. Then when you mentioned that river and the boats far away across it, your eyes lit up; though you pretended ignorance. So I followed you out of La Salute and saw you watch our boats plying the Grand Canal. You watched with delight—yet with a certain air of superiority, as though you had seen better boats; and sailed better boats yourself. Don't worry: no one but me would have noticed."

  "What do you want?"

  "That's easy. I'd love to know the real tale of your world. I'd love to know of your side of the river; the side where you actually lived. Here in Venezia over the years we have hosted several boy-cherubs from your eastern shores. Yet they don't know any river secrets. Never once has a river-woman come here as a cherub—not till now —which is odd."

  No, it wasn't odd. When river-women died, they all went to the /fa-store of the black current. I said nothing, just looked at the man.

  He said, "My friends and I follow these things with care. We take notes. Allow me to surmise, admittedly on insufficient evidence, but—" and he tapped his nose—"on superlative instinct, that perhaps you are the first riverwoman ever to reach the Earth?"

  "You're assuming a lot, Mister."

  "Bernardino is the name."

  Had he heard about our war back home? Undoubtedly not! It was too recent. Cherubs were routed to destinations all over the Earth; and the Earth was a big place, with a million times more land than our own riverbank.

  "I'm betting," said Bernardino, "that you're a riverwoman who is concealing this fact. Now why should that be? My friends and I would be most intrigued to learn more of this current, which fights the Godmind."

  "Why would you be interested in something that's hostile to the Godmind?"

  '"Ah, I place myself in your hands! Perhaps, perhaps that's because my friends and I are opposed to the Godmind too? We've heard of the flaw in your world. We're hungry to learn more."

  "Haven't you ever . . . ?" 'Met anyone from a flawed world before?' was what I was going to say. I checked myself. Probably they would have seen a few flawed cherubs in church now and then; but could they ever have accosted one with any confidence? Hardly! Cherubs who arrived on Earth from flawed worlds wouldn't be very proud of the flaws back home; and probably would be pretty ignorant of the cause—they certainly wouldn't be intimate with it.

  How many worlds had the Worm said were flawed (according to the Godmind)? Half a dozen, wasn't it? Myself, I hadn't run into Flawed Ones from any world other than mine—on that single unfo
rgettable occasion! Six worlds (plus mine) wasn't a large number. Proportionately there must be fewer Kas reaching Earth from such worlds than from unflawed ones. I hadn't exactly gone searching for such flawed folk in Eeden; maybe I should have done . . . Oh yes indeed. Score one black mark against this secret agent, who had been a bit too secret! Now here I was in Venezia, where cherubs weren't nearly as thick on the ground. I could hardly buttonhole all my fellow cherubs at the hotel and ask each in turn, "Psst, are you a Flawed One?" The only way to root one out would be to spend all my spare time in churches listening to others speak, waiting for the odds to pan out eventually. But as a rule we cherubs never attended each other's "services". Eeden had been the place to get to know each other. In Venezia sensible cherubs got on enjoying their earthly afterlife.

  Hmm. I'd been deficient.

  Don't blame me. Look what happened when I didn't run into some Flawed Ones, from my own world. Flawed Ones from other places might have been even worse.

  "I'm hungry," repeated Bernardino. "Are you perhaps hungry too? May I invite you to dinner?"

  "I can get a meal anywhere, any time I want."

  He kissed the tips of his fingers. "Yet not such a meal as this! Nor such conversation, either." His eyes twinkled. "Come and discover a conspiracy."

  Without openly committing myself, I went with Bernardino. The promised conspiracy might give me a chance to stick my oar in and stir things.

  We hurried through alleys across the narrow spit of land to the Accademia bridge; thence to the Piazza San Marco. Only a few old ladies were about in the Piazza, feeding flocks of pigeon-birds. A hundred or so pigeons clattered into the air at our approach. The majority of the birds wheeled around steeply to land again but a few peeled off and flapped up to perch on the Basilica where four galloping bronze horses pawed the sky. (A horse: imagine a goat as big as a cow. It's used for riding or racing.) Maybe one or two of those pigeons up there were eyes of the Godmind, mech-birds. . . .