Greg Bear - Hegira

by Hegira (lit)

  "You're sorry all the time."

  "I'll be sleeping out here," he said. In Mediweva husbands always spent the first few nights sleeping separately from their wives. It supposedly built up friendship and confidence and confirmed the relationship in the eyes of God.

  "You'll be cold. You don't want to sleep out here."

  "Why did you choose me? I can't stay in Golumbine. I'd make a very poor husband."

  "You don't like me?" she asked. "I'm very likable. Lots of men want me."

  "I like you - I want you very much."

  "You don't sound sure."

  "How old are you, Ual?"

  "Marriage age."

  "I mean, how many years?"

  "That is one word I've never been able to understand."

  They took seats next to each other on a divan with cotton cushions. Kiril told her what a year was, and she laughed. Without Obelisk texts to influence a person, Hegira was virtually timeless, divided only into night and day. Seasons weren't important when the prevailing winds were warm and the currents brought a tropical surge day in, day out.

  "I am many, many days old," she said. "I must be many years old, maybe fifty."

  "No," he said. "You can't be fifty. I'd say you're about twenty. Maybe twenty-two."

  "That must be your age."

  "About," he said. "I'm twenty-one, very young."

  "Marriage age."

  "But I can't stay."

  "That's okay. I will have many other husbands, perhaps before you leave."

  He held his hands together between his knees and swal-lowed. He'd almost forgotten. Something ached inside him, and it wasn't his healing rib cage.

  "I'm not used to that, Ual," he said. "Where I come from, a man can only have one wife."

  "Same here, sometimes," she said.

  "But a woman can only have one husband."

  "Oh." She looked at his hands and put her hand on them. "Listen. I am an important woman here. Lots of men want to marry me. But I am important enough I won't need to have more husbands until after you go. Ship will stay here another..." she paused. "Thirty or forty days. Part of a year. I can wait. I like you enough to wait."

  He didn't know what to do. But someone inside of him did. He held her hand up to his and kissed it. It reminded him of kissing Elena's hand, but not in an unpleasant way. It was as if all women were wonderfully the same, with the same ability to soothe and attract... and to hurt terribly if he didn't handle things right. If he did something wrong. He felt very mixed up, but wonderful. "I'm honored," he whispered.

  "That's the way," she said. "Now I know why I picked you. You're a virgin too!"

  Kiril opened and closed his mouth like a fish. He resented her implication all the more because it was true. He looked at her steadfastly. "Why would you want to choose a virgin? Both of us will be stumbling in the dark."

  "There will be no advantages... Both will learn."

  She had moved no closer to him, but the heat of her body and her subtle perfume were already bothering him. There were many texts on the Obelisks that gave intimate details of the love habits of the First-born. There was no reason to think things were any different on the far island of Golum-bine. But did they kiss with their lips?

  It was necessary for him to find out.

  They did, and apparently by long tradition.

  He was still nervous as she stroked the back of his neck and nibbled at his nose. But he noted with some pride that it wasn't a debilitating anxiety. He knew little about disrobing a young woman, but Golumbine's fashions weren't nearly as difficult to remove as Mediweva's had been. He ruefully remembered having tried several times with Elena. If the stays and girdles had been less restraining she might have given in. But he had been ham-handed and both had retreated in discouragement.

  Ual did not retreat. She helped. He grew accustomed to her willingness, but it took some time to get used to her unnerving familiarity with his own clothing and his own person.

  He thought of Elena, not with guilt, but with a sharp, grieving pain. By rights this should have been her night, her privilege - their privilege - and not the smiling, willing joy of an umber-skinned woman in a land Elena had never heard of. Knowing this, and feeling the stab, he understood with more than his mind that he had no choice.

  All of Golumbine was demanding a rebirth. Who was he to resist? He went with her to a room illuminated by small oil lamps, where there was a thick, soft mattress woven of rattan and cotton yarn covered with a sheet of fine linen. The sheet was printed with blocks and circles of purple and brown. As she removed her final garment, a small pair of pants with a skirt around them, and turned to face him, he felt his entire chest alternately weakening and growing strong with the push-pull of his heart and lungs. It was a flutter he'd never felt before, a thick-running excitement that was a mixture of terror and pride.

  He was afraid of hurting her. She pulled him down, her eyes so dark in the dim lamplight that he couldn't see their whites, just narrow gaps of brown, almost black.

  Later, her hips and thighs crimsoned, she took his hand and moved him off the bed. She gathered up the cloth and cut it into small strips with a sharp knife. Then in the sitting room she soaked it in oil and put it in the fire. She squatted before it, an awesome, youthful idol, flames mirrored in her eyes.

  She cleaned both of them off with a soft wet rag and spread another sheet like the first. Kiril found it hard to go to sleep quickly. He stayed awake an hour or more longer than Ual, staring into the dark.

  Fifteen

  Birds rose from the lake, pink and white and midnight blue, as Bar-Woten plunged his paddle into the water and scooted the reed boat along. Jungle circled the lake and even extended onto it on long legs of twisted roots. Birds and aquatic lizards flocked across the roots in squawking conflict. The sky was a hot, pale blue. The north was no longer dark. Through a smoked glass a bright band of light could be seen extending from the western Obelisk and widening to form an ovoid where the northern Obelisk had been.

  A head with glittering, opalescent eyes rose in the water where he was about to dip his paddle, making him jerk his arm back. The head vanished, and water sprayed with the swish of a tail. This was no lake for unaided swimmers. Insects as long as a finger scurried over it and dipped below to pierce small fish and tadpoles with wicked mandibles. They could just as easily bite through an unwary hand. White snakes - a delicate side dish for the Golumbines - gathered in floating lacework colonies to swim and bask.

  The lake was a soup of life. It was tepid and brackish at one end, clogged with leech-infested reeds and matted algae. It did not smell too offensive because the wind was fresh and strong. The wind dried off the sweat of his paddling and made the jungle hum and whistle. Drifts of spider web floated from the trees.

  He brought the boat up onto a dirt embankment and pulled it out of the water. Then he sat on a mossy rock to think. His foot found a hold in the spotted gray stone, and he bent to examine the niche. It was more than a rock - it was a head. Worn gray eyes peered at him, eyebrows cracked and covered with lichen. The stone nose was half-buried in thick damp soil. Ageless idols were not rare here, but the head still fascinated him. He had often dreamed of exploring long-deserted cities. Perhaps temples existed in the jungle that could begin to slake that thirst. But the deep jungle wasn't recommended for inexpert visitors.

  He had borrowed the boat and crossed the lake to find a place to sit and think alone and in relative silence. But now that he was alone, he couldn't concentrate. His mind kept drifting off into the past, but that way led to blood and cruelty and mind-blanked hatred. It also reminded him of a great love for Sulay.

  He still felt sad for Sulay. The memories welled up, and he couldn't put them aside: The day he had fought with the bear and lost his eye, and that evening as the surgeons had bandaged him... Sulay had stood over him in the dark and firelight with the dark forest all around, chuckling and reassuring. "You're Bear-killer now... Woten would be proud, and so would the Thun
der-Bearer, Eloshim."

  Years later, as an aide to the general, he had been given the pick of the captured Khemites to choose a servant from. Tired from the fighting and feeling dirty with blood and self-anger, Bar-Woten had recognized a face among the children. Barthel - "Servant of Bar," originally named Amma bin Akka - had been small, dark, and scrappy with more spirit and fear and hate than Bar-Woten had ever thought he could control. But the young Khemite had taken to Bar-Woten as if to a second father, imitating him and absorbing all he had to teach, although retaining his Momadan faith. For years Bar-Woten had trusted the Khemite not to plunge a knife into his back. There was good reason for him to try, Bar-Woten knew - but the Khemite didn't know.

  And Bar-Woten would never tell, because his stomach heaved at the memory. It was just as well that Barthel had hidden under reed baskets that day in Khem and seen so little.

  An insect crawled up his leg, and he let it climb onto his finger, chancing that it might sting or prick, but it did nothing, and he set it off on the jungle floor.

  He brought out bis leather pouch and ate. What was most terrible of all was that he didn't feel nearly as guilty as he should. He took his pain with a sort of zest. He knew he could repeat the past at any time, because though forbidding, it wasn't nearly as frightening as what lay ahead. Establishing familiar territory in the future was necessary, even though the landmarks should be blood and destructions.

  Bar-Woten shook his head slowly, chewing on his piece of fruit. He packed his waste into the leather pouch and put the boat in the river to continue his journey.

  Golumbine offered any number of marvels to the casual eye. There were deep green gorges slashed by long plumes of waterfalls where circular rainbows dazzled. There were multicolored reptile herds, some carnivorous but most not, that stalked through the forest on then- hind feet, hunting or browsing on the lower branches and ferns. Butterflies as wide as two hands thumb-to-thumb bobbed in and out of shadow. There were marble quarries and quartz hillsides.

  And there was Mappu itself, where men were in abun-dance, and neither he nor Barthel found themselves in much demand. He smiled at that, thinking of Kirn's distress.

  He was envious. He'd grown a little bored with the women of the Trident.

  Barthel looked at the maps laid out before him on a forecastle capstan and drew his finger along the Bicht of Weggismarche. There was a small circle that showed the former position of the Obelisk. He used a pencil to sketch in the probable path of the fall.

  Their trade route took them through several broad curves from Golumbine to southern Weggismarche. Depending on what they found after delivering their chief cargo - saffron and several other ton-lots of spice - they'd make a brief journey into the Pale Seas to pick up goods in the port of Dambapur, the farthest northern city of Weggismarche's tiny sister-state, Nin. Then they'd sail with the currents to the southeast and begin another long circle, which, in five or six years, would again end in Weggismarche.

  If there was nothing left of Weggismarche their plans would have to change, of course. At any rate Barthel knew that Bar-Woten, Kiril, and himself would probably leave the ship before then. They might travel along the coast of the Pale Seas, though the map showed little of what lay in those regions beyond a cursory trace of probable coastal zones.

  He was reluctant to leave the Trident. He'd learned a lot on the ship and gained some independence from the Bey by being able to do his own work and think his own thoughts. But his loyalty was still too strong to break. He'd go where the Bey went, and Kiril probably would as well.

  He had seen Kiril with his "wife" the day before at one of Mappu's vegetable markets. Kiril had appeared contented. That puzzled Barthel. Changes in men's moods or mores always puzzled him. The Bey had been the way he was since Barthel had known him, given allowances for times and strenuous circumstances. But Kiril, closer to Barthel's age, seemed much more changeable. Barthel wondered if he himself could show fluctuations as broad. He didn't think so.

  Work on the port hull of the Trident was nearly finished. In a few weeks the ship would be ready to leave, and they'd all have to detach themselves from Golumbine. He was glad he didn't have many detachments to make.

  Captain Prekari made his usual midafternoon inspection of the repairs, carrying rolls of ship's plans in metal tubes, as Bar-Woten came aboard. He went to his cabin aad saluted the captain in passing, dropped his goods on the narrow double bunk he shared with Barthel - who took the upper berth - and went aft to shower under freshwater pumps. He didn't trust the baywater yet. No one did. The saltwater pumps were detached for the time they'd spend in the harbor.

  He soaked himself down and used lye soap to scrub off.

  Kiril came aboard two hours later, haggard and irritable. Barthel showed him the map course but didn't ask any questions. The evening meal was quiet. Those who had worked all day on the ship and those who had been ashore all day looked equally fatigued.

  Just after dusk Kiril lay on a lower berth in the cabin he shared with three other men and listened to someone striking up a dance with pipes and tambourine on the quarterdeck. He was too tired to think, though Ual came to mind before he went to sleep. He had been helping two of her half-brothers repair the cracks in the house that day. It had taken a great deal of mortar mixing and masonry, and his hands were raw. He had told her he had to be on board this evening for watch, too weary to face the planned family festivities after the day was done. Still, just before sleep, he missed her warmth and wished he had stayed behind.

  He dreamed about walking with Elena to the temple of Dat in the older section of Mappu. She offered up torn strips of cloth, and the statue bent to accept them with a

  flaming hand. The statue was not dark-bronze, but mirror-bright silver; and the cloth strips turned to ice and melted away in the flames, hissing. He woke in the morning with a drained feeling and wondered what Elena would have been doing, in any case, on Golumbine.

  The morale of the ship was at a low ebb. They had no idea what had happened in Weggismarche, whether there was any country to return to or not. They feared not.

  Some fights broke out, and the animosities they caused were difficult to settle. The captain avoided direct contact with the crew, which Bar-Woten knew was a standard tactic in times of unresolvable tension. Work on the ship slowed somewhat, and the quality of the work declined.

  More and more of the crew were withdrawn from helping the Golumbines and assigned to repair details on the Trident, allowing shorter shifts. Kiril sweated for a day the possibility he would be withdrawn also, but he remained.

  At midday, his library instruction duties over, he went to Ual's clan home and helped fix the family meal. It was everybody's duty to contribute something to the late after-noon repast. Kiril was no good as a cook, so he helped with the cleaning and basic preparation of the raw food. Ual and one sister did most of the cooking.

  The family was huge by any standard. The relations of the various members to each other were difficult to understand and impossible for Kiril to remember. He stumbled along as best he could and tried to keep his astonishment and indig-nation in check. Family standards for breeding were much looser than in Mediweva. Dat, he learned from Ual, was the product of her own extratemporal union with the ocean god, Nepheru-Shaka. She was her own mother then, and her own daughter. Nepheru-Shaka was conceived (again out of time) by Dat and the island god, Ashlok - both of whom were female, but Ashlok less definitely so. From this Trinity - with Ashlok as the only unbegotten and unexplained part - came all the other forces, gingerii, minor gods, and the seventy-nine Notions that comprised the loose pantheon of Golumbine. It was a very intellectual religion, quite static. By any definition of culture the Golumbine population should have crumbled into formless bands and gone through the agonies of cultural renaissance long ago. But the culture was stable and showed no signs of decay. Kiril, struggling to ignore the lessons of First-born history as recorded on the Obelisks, speculated the Golumbines were flexible in other ways. Cert
ainly the family group was flexible. They seemed to follow the example of their gods - first cousins were allowed to marry; even, in certain circumstances, brother and sister.

  The generic name of Ual's family was Punapilhi, with the ending "hi" whistled. Within that group name, seldom used, were other names denoting people living together under one roof, people wishing to be named as a subgroup for various reasons, associations of artisans within the family, and other relations that escaped Kiril.

  Ual herself was directly involved with family planning. She was a representative in what the Trident's crew called "the Rebirth Committee." Its main function was to keep Golumbine's diverse family groups together and encourage the production of healthy children. They had a crude but surprisingly effective method of family counseling on good breeding. To an extent this made them matchmakers.

  Ual's natural father accepted Kiril without comment. Ual had several family fathers - her natural father was not even her favorite. All her fathers - and at one count Kiril found six - had been husbands to her mother, who was a pleasant, plump old woman, no great beauty now, but handsome and jovial. Kiril took a shine to her.