The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  They sat, dozed, woke with a start only to doze again. The light faded and Mavin took the fish lanterns out of her basket to hang one upon the staff she carried, one upon Mercald’s staff. The light was not the warming amber-red of firelight but the chill blue-green of water, and they found themselves shivering.

  “The wind will let up about midnight,” said Mavin. “I suggest we wrap up tightly, get as close together as possible to share warmth, and wait until then to go on.” She heard no dissent, not even from the Thinker, though he did not lie down among them but sat under the chill green lanterns muttering to himself, making notes in his little book.

  The wind began to howl loudly, rocking the stair, moving it in a curiously restful motion, so that they all slept as in a cradle, or, thought Mavin, as on the deck of a sea-going ship.

  It was the cessation of motion that wakened Mavin, that and the stillness. The Thinker still sat, still muttered, eyes fixed on something the rest of them could not see. In the darkness, she could see firelight glittering on Beedie’s open eyes.

  “So. You’re awake, sausage girl.”

  “I’m sore,” she complained. “Next time I’m going to bring something softer to sleep on.”

  “How often do you plan to go on such expeditions?”

  “Whenever I can. Don’t you think it’s exciting?”

  “Umm,” said Mavin. “What does Roges think?”

  “I’m sure he thinks he’ll be very glad when he can get me back to Topbridge and maybe marry me and probably talk me into having babies.”

  “What do you think about that?” Mavin sat back, pulling her own blanket around them so that they half reclined between Roges and Mercald, warmed by their sleeping bodies. “Is that something you would enjoy?”

  “When Roges and I are – when we’re … ah … involved, I don’t mind the idea. Then, other times, like now, I do mind the idea. I want to go to Harvester’s bridge and around the chasm corner and see what’s there. I want to see that thing you told the Thinker about, that glacier. I can’t do that if I’m all glued down on Topbridge with babies and Aunt Six being grandma. Whoof. I’d sooner eat dried flopperskin.”

  “By that, I presume you mean the idea lacks flavor.”

  “Flavor, and chewability, and a good smell. Oh, Mavin, I don’t know. Were you ever in love?”

  Mavin considered this. In the lovely summer forest, once, she had loved. In the long ago of Pfarb Durim, when she had been the age Beedie was now, she had looked into love’s face, had heard its very voice. Since she had seen the dead youth fluttering like a dry leaf into the chasm, she had been aware of mortality in a way she had never been before. If she were honest, she would admit that the five years which stretched between now and that time she would meet Himaggery seemed a very long time, a time she would shorten if she could. And yet it would be hard to say why, for little had passed between them in that long ago time. Little? Or perhaps much?

  Finally she answered. “I believe … believe that I love, yes. Someone. And yet, I have not sought him out in many years. I do not go to him or call him to me.”

  “How do you know he’s still alive? People die, you know. Things happen to them.” Beedie had thought of this in the night hours, had wondered how she would feel if she put off Roges until some future time and then found there was no future time for them. “If I had to choose, I suppose I’d rather have a child now than never do it at all.”

  Mavin shivered at this expression of her own thoughts. “You would rather love Roges now than never do it at all? Even though it might keep you from that far turn of the chasm?”

  “Hmm. I think so. How do I know? Would there be someone else who would make me feel the same way? Would I have cheated him if I did not?”

  Mavin chuckled, humor directed at herself rather than at Beedie. “I know. Since I met … the one I speak of, all other men have seemed to have … too much meat on their faces. I find myself longing for a certain cast of feature, a strong boniness, a wide, twisty mouth, eyes which seem to understand more than that mouth says…”

  “Eyebrows which meet in the middle over puzzled, sometimes angry eyes,” whispered Beedie. “A certain smell to skin. A certain curl of hair around an ear…”

  “Ah, yes, sausage girl. Well, I will say only this one thing to you. If you would regret forever not having done a thing, then do it. But you need not give up your dreams in order to have done it. Go, if you will, and take your man and babies with you.”

  “Roges has the down-dizzies.” She said it sadly, as though she had announced a dire and deadly disease.

  “Well then, leave him at home with the babies and tell him you’ll see him when you return.” She stood up, stretching her arms to hear the bones crack. “Midnight?” she announced loudly into the silence. “Are we ready to go on?”

  They rose, groaning from the hard surface. “Stairs should be carpeted,” said Beedie. “Either that, or they should put way stations with beds every half day along them.”

  “Shhhh.” Mavin’s hiss quieted them all. She had pulled the makeshift windshield aside and was leaning out over the stair rail, peering into the depths. “Look.”

  Below them in the suddenly calm air, the chasm was full of lights, globes of pearly luminescence which swam through the moist air, collected in clusters like ripening fruits, then separated once more to move in long, glowing spirals and curving lines. As they watched, several of the globes swam up to their level, peered at them from the abyss with wide, fishes’ eyes from bodies spherical and puffed as little balloons of chilly light. One of them emitted a tiny, burping sound, then dropped with a sudden, surprised swoop to a much lower level and fled. The other, a smaller, bluer one, with quick, busy fins, followed them as they continued the downward way. There were smaller things in the chasm, also, vibrations of translucent wings, shivering dots of poised flight, darting among the glowing fish to be gulped down whenever they approached too near.

  Other blue fish joined the one which followed them, and then still others, until they were trailed by a long tail of blue light, shifting and glowing. “There,” said Mavin suddenly, pointing ahead of them. After a moment they saw what she had seen, huge stumps of mainroot, projecting into the chasm like broken corbels. “This is where the city was.”

  “Waterlight,” said Beedie and Roges together.

  “What was that?”

  “Waterlight,” said Roges. “The name of Lostbridge was really Waterlight. At least, according to the books up in Bottommost.”

  “I can see why,” murmured Mercald. “I haven’t seen a bird of any kind since way before Bottommost. Do you think these fishes keep them away?”

  “I think the air is too wet for them,” said Mavin, not bothering to tell him that she knew so from experience. “Feathers would get soggy, heavy in this air. It would be almost impossible to fly.”

  “No Birders, then,” he said. “I wonder what religion the people had to come uncomplaining into this depth.”

  “Follow the leader, I should think,” said Roges. “The man who built Waterlight was named Mirtylon. From the tone of the stories we read, the people followed him and him alone.”

  “Always a mistake,” said Mercald. “To follow men instead of the Boundless.”

  “On the other hand,” remarked Beedie, “if you’re following a man, he can at least tell you what he really expects you to do. Sometimes it seems to me the Boundless is a little vague.”

  Mavin was examining the end of the severed mainroots, noticing that they did not appear to have been chopped through or sawn. The ends were blunted, as though melted. She shivered. “Down,” she said. “We’re spending too much time in chitchat. This was the level of the city; now we’ll find out where it went.”

  Though Beedie had expected the stair to end at the site of the ancient bridgetown, it went on down, doubling back on itself onto a new root system. They clambered around the turn, carrying the lantern fish which seemed to attract other, living ones, so that they continu
ed to walk with a growing tail of lighted globes.

  “Electron transport,” said the Thinker suddenly, almost yelling. “Hydrogen segregation through cytochromes.”

  “What are you saying now?” asked Mercald in a kindly tone. “What is it, Thinker?”

  “That’s how they float. Hydrogen. They crack it out of water, using heme or heme-like proteins … remarkable.” He did a little jig on the stairs, scratching himself as he sought his little notebook among his rags. “We could test it, of course. Try lighting one of them. It should go up in a puff of flame.”

  “Difficult to light a flame down here, Thinker. Have you noticed how damp you are? How damp everything is?”

  He had tried to separate the pages of his notebook which sogged into a kind of pulp in his hands, and he merely looked at her with an annoyed expression. Beedie felt the increasing weight of her hair, the knot on her neck as waterlogged as it was possible to be. Also, the air had grown warmer during the past hours so that they seemed to move through a thin soup, almost as much liquid as gas. “I’ve been in fogs as thick as this before,” said Mavin, as though talking to herself. “But not many. I hope we’re nearly down, for if it gets any thicker, we’ll be swimming.”

  She stopped, amazed, for the light of the fishes showed a net reaching out from the stair in every direction, as far as she could see on every side. Fish swam up and down through the meshes, some large, some small, and below the net they gathered by the thousands. The stair burrowed through the net, and they followed it down, silent, wondering, one man height, two, three, four. Then Mavin stepped off the root onto stone, the others crowding after. “Shhh,” she said. “Listen. Water running.”

  The sound seemed to come from all around them, a light splashing, babbling sound, an occasional whoosh of air, a chuckle as of streams over stone. “The fish are all above us now,” said Beedie. “None below us. We must be at the Bottom.” At that moment her feet struck solid stone.

  “Look up,” said Roges. “Noonglow.” There, so far above them that it did not seem they could have come from that height, was the narrow ribbon of green light which meant noonglow, a mere finger’s width shining through the fish-spangled gloom. “Bottommost is only a day and a half from the Bottom. I thought it was much farther than that.”

  “No one has tried to find out for a very long time,” said Beedie. “Because everyone believes it is dangerous. I told you that, Mavin.”

  “Indeed you did, root dangler. I haven’t forgotten. But I remember also that you did not tell me why it is dangerous, or for whom. So let us go carefully, watchfully.”

  “And well prepared,” said Roges, taking his knife from his belt. “I thank the Boundless we have sure footing beneath us if danger comes.”

  “I, too,” murmured Mercald. “I thank the Boundless for having seen such wonders. What must we do next?”

  “The promise I made to Rootweaver, priest, was that we would put an end to whatever it is that eats the roots of the towns. So much; no less, no more. In return for which she keeps Handbright safe, awaiting our return. Well, we know it is the gray oozers which eat the roots. I have seen none of them on the root wall below Bottommost. So I presume we must search.” She had been speaking moderately loudly, loudly enough to attract a circle of curious fish, loudly enough that they were not really surprised to hear a voice answering her from outside their circle…

  It was a breathy voice, the kind of voice a forge bellows might have, full of puffing and excess wind. “You need … not search … far … travelers.” The word was stretched and breathed, “traaahvehlehhhrs.”

  They turned as one, peering into the shadowy light, seeing nothing at first, locating the speaker only when it spoke again.

  “What are … you looking … for … travelers? Is it … only … the bad beasts … of the … Bottomlands?” Bhaaahtahmlahhhnds

  Even Mavin, more experienced than the others in the variety of which the world was capable, shivered a little at this voice. There was something ominous in it, though the robed figure which stood in the shadows of the root wall did not menace them in any way. It merely stood, occasionally illuminated by a passing fish, its hood hiding its face. Mavin shivered again. “We do indeed, stranger. We seek certain beasts, if they are gray, and huge, and eat the roots on which the bridgetowns depend. And we are greatly surprised to find any … any person here in the Bottomlands, for we believed them occupied only by creatures…”

  “Ahhhh. But … you knew … of Waterlight.” Whaaaahtehrlaihhht. “Is it believed…” – puff, puff – “that … those on … Waterlight … perished?”

  Beedie started to say something, but Mavin clutched her tightly by the shoulder, bidding her be silent. “Nothing is known of Waterlight, stranger. Nothing save old stories.”

  “Do the … stories … speak … Mirtylon?”

  “They do, yes,” said Roges.

  “I am … Mirtylon,” Aihh ahhm Muhhhrtihlohhn… said the figure, moving a little out of the shadow toward them, stopping as they took an involuntary step back, away from it. It was robed from head to toe in loose folds of flattree leaf; a veil of the same material covered its face; its hands were hidden in the full sleeves. It regarded them now through mere slits in the face covering, a vaguely man-high thing, but with only a line of shoulder and head gleaming in the fish light to say that it had anything resembling manshape.

  “Ah,” said Mavin. “Waterlight has not been heard of for some hundreds of years. If you are indeed Mirtylon, then you have lived a long time, stranger.”

  “The … Bottomlands are … healthful. Things … live very … long here.”

  “Enzymes,” murmured the theoretician, patting his pockets in search of the notebook which had turned to moist pulp. “Cell regeneration…”

  “We desire … to welcome … you … properly,” the form went on. “Our … village is … only a … little distance, … toward the wind…”

  “One moment,” said Mavin. “Let us confer for a time.” She drew them into a huddle, watching the robed thing over Roges’s shoulder. “There is something here I do not like,” she muttered. “And I do not want all of us in one heap, like jacks to be picked up on the bounce – Aha, you play that game, do you? Well, I am not about to have it played upon us.

  “Beedie, I want you and Roges to go back up the stairs, quick and hard. Keep going until you’re above where Waterlight used to be. Keep going until the air is dry enough to get a fire going, then build a deadroot fire on the hearth and keep it burning until you hear from me. Don’t let it go out. If anyone comes from above, it will be Slysaw. Hide yourself and the fire as best you can and let him come down. If anything comes at you from below, use torches. Do not seem surprised at anything I say, and do … not … argue with me!” This last was at the rebellious expression on Beedie’s face. “I would send Mercald if I thought he could make the climb fast enough. He can’t. The Thinker would forget what he was told to do in theorizing about something else. I have no choice. Our lives may depend upon having someone up there who can go for help if we need it, so get going.”

  Still resentful, Beedie turned toward the stairs, Roges close behind.

  “Surely … you will not … go so soon,” puffed the stranger. “We would … show … our … hospital … ity.”

  “We have others waiting for us a little way up the stairs,” called Mavin, urging Beedie and Roges upward. “I’m sending the young ones to bring them down. Can you have someone meet the party here when they return?”

  There was a doubtful pause, almost as though the figure engaged itself in conversation, for the figure poised, bent, poised again in a way that had a questioning, answering feeling about it. Then at last the breathy voice answered, “We will … meet them. Now … we will … go to our … village.”

  Without looking back, the figure moved along the chasm floor, winding its way between fallen rocks and huge, buttress roots which emerged from the root wall like partitions, ponderous in their height, thickly furred
with hair. Mavin looked up at the net spread above them, seemingly stretching from wall to wall of the chasm, from which more root hairs dropped into the rocky soil to make fringed walls along the path on either side.

  “Protection,” the Thinker muttered. “To protect them from stuff falling off the rim and from the bridgetowns. I would imagine the nets cover the entire area they occupy. And the net is living, of course, because of all these root hairs hanging down, which must mean that they cut these paths through it. No. No. Ah. Look,” and he pulled one of the fringing root hairs up before Mavin’s face. “Not cut. Rounded. As though it just stopped growing. Hmm. Now, what would make it do that…”

  Mavin did not answer. She was too busy considering that Mirtylon, seemingly so eager to offer hospitality, had not turned to see whether they followed. She looked behind her, seeking Mercald’s face, pale as a fish belly. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” he whispered. “My heart is pounding. I smell something strange. It makes me sweat and shiver.”

  “Pheromones,” said the Thinker. “Something exuded by a living thing to attract mates or warn predators away. Perhaps exuded voluntarily by some kind of water dweller…”

  “Perhaps involuntarily,” murmured Mavin. “By something that calls itself Mirtylon.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As they walked through the fibrous hallways of the Bottom following the robed stranger, Mavin felt all her senses begin to quiver and extend. Unseen by Mercald or the Thinker, she sharpened her eyes, enlarging them and moving them outward so that she could have a wider range of vision to the sides. What light there was was not much diminished by the netted roof they walked beneath for lantern fish swarmed through the whiskery jungle, casting pale circles of cold light.