by Anissa Gray
“And Issib says that’s only because he has more time, being useless at everything else,” said Hushidh. “It’s as if they both have to find reasons why the other is much better. I think they’ve become good friends.”
“I know it,” said Shedemei. “Issib is able to see how fine a man Zdorab really is.”
“We all understand that,” said Luet.
“Do you?” said Shedemei. “Sometimes it seems to me that everyone thinks of him as a sort of universal servant.”
“We think of him as our cook because he’s the best at it,” said Hushidh. “And our librarian because he’s the best at that.”
“Ah, but only a few of us care about his archival skills; to most of the people in our company, his culinary skills are the only things they notice about him.”
“And his gardening,” said Luet.
Shedemei smiled. “You see? But he gets little respect for it.”
“From some,” said Hushidh. “But others respect him greatly.”
“I know Nafai does,” said Luet. “And I do.”
“And I, and Issib—and Volemak, too, I know that,” said Hushidh.
“And isn’t that everybody that matters?” asked Luet.
“I tell him that,” said Shedemei, “but he persists in playing the servant.”
Hushidh could see that, for this moment at least, Shedemei was closer to opening her heart to someone than ever before on this journey. She hardly knew, though, how to encourage her to go on—should she prod with a question, or keep silence so as not to impede her?
She kept silence.
And so did Shedemei.
Until at last Shedemei sniffed loudly and put her nose down near Chveya’s diaper. “Has our little kaka factory produced another load?” she asked. “Now is the time when my permanent aunthood pays off. Mama Luet, your baby needs you.”
They laughed—because of course they knew that Shedemei was as likely to change a baby’s diaper as not. This business of giving the baby back to the mother whenever taking care of it was a bother was only a joke.
No, not only a joke. It was also a wistful regret. Shedemei’s reminder to herself that, like her husband Zdorab, she was not really one of the company of women. She had been on the verge, Hushidh knew it, of telling something that mattered . . . and then the moment had passed.
As Luet cleaned her baby, Shedemei watched, and Hushidh watched her watching. Near the end of her bath, Luet was wearing nothing but a light skirt, and the shape of her motherly body—heavy breasts, a belly still loose and full from the birthing not that many months ago—was sweetly framed as she knelt and bent over her baby. What does Shedemei see when she looks at Luet, whose figure was once as lean and boyish as Shedemei’s is still? Does she wish for that transformation?
Apparently, though, Shedemei’s own thoughts had taken a different turn. “Luet,” she said, “when we were at that lake yesterday, did it remind you of the Lake of Women in Basilica?”
“Oh yes,” said Luet.
“You were the waterseer there,” said Shedemei. “Didn’t you want to float out into the middle of it, and dream?”
Luet hesitated a moment. “There was no boat,” she said. “And nothing to make one out of. And the water was too hot to float in it myself.”
“Was it?” said Shedemei.
“Yes,” said Luet. “Nafai checked for me. He passed through the Lake of Women too, you know.”
“But didn’t you wish that you could be—for just a little while—the person you were before?”
The longing in Shedemei’s voice was so strong that Hushidh immediately understood. “But Luet is the same person,” said Hushidh. “She’s still the waterseer, even if she now spends her days on camelback and her nights in a tent and every hour with a baby fastened to her nipple.”
“Is she the waterseer, then?” asked Shedemei. “She was—but is she? Or are we nothing more than what we’re doing now? Aren’t we truly only what the people we live with think we are?”
“No,” said Hushidh. “Or that would mean that in Basilica I was nothing but the raveler, and Luet was nothing but the waterseer, and you were nothing but a geneticist, and that was never true, either. There’s always something above and behind and beneath the role that everyone sees us acting out. They may think that we are the script we act out but we don’t have to believe it.”
“Who are we then?” asked Shedemei. “Who am I?”
“Always a scientist,” said Luet, “because you’re still doing science in your mind every hour you’re awake.”
“And our friend,” said Hushidh.
“And the person in our company who understands best how things work,” added Luet.
“And Zdorab’s wife,” said Hushidh. “That’s the one that means the most to you, I think.”
To their surprise and consternation, Shedemei’s only answer was to lay down Dza on the carpet and lightly run from the tent. Hushidh caught only a glimpse of her face, but she was weeping. There was no doubt of that. She was weeping because Hushidh had said that being Zdorab’s wife meant more to her than anything. It was what a woman might do if she doubted her husband’s love. But how could she doubt? It was obvious that Zdorab’s whole life was centered around her. There were no better friends in the company than Zodya and Shedya, everyone knew that—unless it was Luet and Hushidh, and they were sisters so it hardly counted.
What could possibly be wrong between Zdorab and Shedemei that would cause such a strong woman to be so fragile on the subject? A mystery. Hushidh longed to ask the Oversoul, but knew she’d get the same answer as always—silence. Or else the answer Luet already got—mind your own business.
The best thing and the worst thing about turning back and taking another route south was that they could see the sea. In particular, they could see Dorova Bay, an eastern arm of the Scour Sea. And on clear nights—which all the nights were—they could see, on the far side of that bay, the lights of the city of Dorova.
It was not a city like Basilica, they all knew that. It was a scrubby edge-of-the-desert town filled with riffraff and profiteers, failures and thieves, violent and stupid men and women. They told each other that over and over, remembering tales of desert towns and how they weren’t worth visiting even if they were the last towns in the world.
Except that Dorova was the last town in the world—the last town in their world, anyway. The last they would ever see. It was the town they could have visited more than a week ago, when Volemak led them up into the mountains from the Nividimu and they left the last hope of civilization behind—or the last danger of it, for those who had that perspective.
Nafai saw how others looked at those lights, when they gathered at night, fireless, chilly, the bundled infants smacking and suckling away as they drank cold water and gnawed on jerky and hard biscuit and dried melon. How Obring got tears in his eyes—tears! And what was the city to him, anyway, except a place to get his hooy polished? Tears! And Sevet was no better, with her simple, steady gaze, that stony look on her face. She had a baby at her breast, and all she could think of was a city so small and filthy that she wouldn’t have stepped into its streets two years ago. If they had offered her twenty times her normal fee to come and sing there, she would have sneered at the offer—and now she couldn’t keep her eyes off of it.
But looking was all they could do, fortunately. They could see it, but they had no boat to cross the bay, and none of them could swim well enough to cross that many kilometers without a boat. Besides, they weren’t at the beach, they were at least a kilometer above it, at the edge of a craggy, rugged incline that couldn’t decide whether to be a cliff or a slope. There might be a way to get the camels down, but it wasn’t likely, and even if they did, it would be several days’ journey back along the beach, with the camels—and without them, there would be no water to drink and so they couldn’t make it at all. No, nobody was going to be able to slip away from the group and make it to Dorova. The only way there was if the whole group wen
t, and even then they would probably have to go back the way they came, which meant a week and a half at least, and probably one of the caravans from the south to contend with along the way. And it was all meaningless because Father would never go back.
And yet Nafai couldn’t stop thinking about how much these people wanted that city.
How much he wanted it.
Yes, there was the trouble. That’s what bothered him. He wanted the city, too. Not for any of the things they wanted, or at least the things he imagined that they wanted. Nafai had no desire for any wife but Luet; they were a family, and that wouldn’t change no matter where they lived, he had decided that long ago. No, what Nafai wanted was a soft bed to lay Chveya in. A school to take her to. A house for Luet and Chveya and whatever children might come after. Neighbors and friends—friends that he might choose for himself, not this accidental collection of people, most of whom he just didn’t like that much. That’s what those lights meant to him—and instead here he was on a grassy meadow that sloped deceptively downward toward the sea, so that if you just squinted a little, you couldn’t really tell you were a kilometer above sea level, you could pretend for a few moments that it was just a stroll across the meadow, and then a short ride on a boat across the bay, and then you’d be home, the journey would be over, you could bathe and then sleep in a bed and wake up to find a breakfast cooking already, and you’d find your wife in your arms beside you, and then you’d hear the faint sound of your baby daughter waking, and you’d slip out of bed and go get her from her cradle and bring her in to your wife, who would sleepily draw her breast from inside her nightgown and put it into the mouth of the baby that now nestled in the crook of her arm on the bed, and you’d lie back down beside her and listen to the sucking and smacking of the baby as you also heard the birds singing outside the window and the noises of morning in the street not far away, the venders starting to cry out what they had to sell. Eggs. Berries. Cream. Sweet breads and cakes.
Oversoul, why couldn’t you have left us alone? Why couldn’t you have waited another generation? Forty million years, and you couldn’t wait for Luet’s and my great-grandchildren to have this great adventure? You couldn’t have let Issib and me figure out how to build one of those marvelous ancient flying machines, so we could go to wherever you’re taking us in just a few hours? Time, that’s all we needed, really. Time to live before we lost our world.
Stop whining, said the Oversoul in Nafai’s mind. Or maybe it wasn’t the Oversoul. Maybe it was just Nafai’s own sense that he had indulged himself too much already.
It was morning, just before dawn, at the spring the Index had told them was named Shazer, though why anyone should have bothered to name such an obscure place, and why the Oversoul had bothered to remember, Nafai could not begin to guess. Vas had had the last watch of the night, and then came and woke Nafai so they could hunt together. Three days since they last had meat, and this was a good campsite so they could take two days to hunt if need be. So Vas would catch sight of something, or find some fresh animal trace; Nafai would trail after him and, when the quarry was near, creep silently forward until the animal came in sight. Then Nafai would take the sacred pulse, aim so carefully, trying to guess which way the animal would move, and how far, and how fast, and then he would squeeze the trigger and the beam of light would burn a hole into the heart of the creature, sear it so that the wound would never bleed, except for a hot wet smoke that would stain the sand and rocks it fell on red and black.
Nafai was tired of it. But it was his duty, and so when Vas scratched softly on the cloth of the tent, near where he knew Nafai’s head lay, Nafai awoke at once—if he had not already been awake, coasting on the verges of a dream—and got up and dressed without waking Luet or Chveya and took the pulse out of its box and joined Vas outside in the chilly darkness.
Vas nodded a greeting to him—they tried to avoid speaking, lest they wake babies unnecessarily—and then turned slowly, finally pointing toward the downhill slope. Not toward the city, but still toward the sea. Downward. Nafai normally thought it was a stupid plan to go downhill on the hunt, since it would mean carrying the game back uphill to get it to camp. But this time he wanted to go down. Even though he would never abandon their quest, even though he had no thought of betraying either Father or the Oversoul, nevertheless there was a part of him that longed for the sea, and for what lay across the sea, and so he nodded when Vas pointed toward the seaward slope of the meadow.
When they were well away from the camp, and over the brow of the hill, they stopped and peed, and then began the difficult descent into the tumble of rocks that led downward. All the slope ahead of them lay in shadow, since the dawn was coming up behind them. But Vas was the tracker, and Nafai had long since learned that he was both good at it and very proud of his prowess, so things went better if Nafai didn’t try to second-guess him.
It wasn’t an easy climb, though the darkness was easing with every moment that passed, for dawn seemed to light the sky from horizon to horizon far more quickly here than it ever had in Basilica. Was it the latitude? The dry desert air? Whatever the cause, he could see, but what he saw was a confusion of cliffs and crags, ledges and outcroppings that would challenge the nimblest of animals. What kind of creature do you hope to find, Vas? What kind of animal could live here?
But these were just Nafai’s normal doubts—fearing the worst even as he knew that there was plenty of vegetation here, and there’d be no difficulty finding game. It would just be hard to get it home. Which was another reason why Elemak had always sent a hunter and tracker together, either Nafai and Vas or, back when there was more than one pulse, Elemak as hunter and Obring as tracker. When they were successful, the team would come home with each man carrying half a beast over his shoulders. It happened more often with Nafai and Vas, however, in part because Nafai was the best shot and in part because Obring could never really keep his mind on tracking well enough to do a good job, so that Elemak ended up having to divide his concentration to do both jobs.
Vas, though, could concentrate very well, seeing things that no one else had noticed. Vas could follow the same prey relentlessly for hours and hours. Like a fighting dog that gripped with its teeth and never let go. It was part of the reason why Nafai succeeded so much more often—because Vas would bring him to the prey. The rest of the success, however, was Nafai’s own. Nobody could approach so near to the prey in silence; nobody’s aim was as steady and true. They were a good team, and yet in all their lives they had never imagined that they’d be good at hunting. It would never have crossed their minds.
Soon enough, Vas found something—a small mark. Nafai had long since given up trying to see all the things that Vas saw—to him it didn’t look like an animal sign, but then it often didn’t. Nafai just followed along, keeping his eyes open for predators that might decide that human beings were either a threat or a meal. The animal’s trail led farther and farther down the slope, so far that by midmorning Nafai could see a clear and easy route that would lead down to the beach. For reasons he wasn’t proud of, he wanted to go down that path and at least put his feet in the water of Dorova Bay. But Vas was not going that way—he was leading them across the face of an increasingly steep and dangerous cliff.
Why would an animal have chosen this route? Nafai wondered. What kind of animal is it? But of course he said nothing; it was a point of pride, to maintain perfect silence throughout the hunt.
Just as they reached the most dangerous part of the passage, where they would have to traverse a smooth surface of rock with no ledge at all, only friction to keep them from falling down fifty meters or more, Vas stopped and pointed, indicating that the prey was on the other side of the traverse. That was bad news. It would mean that Nafai would have to make the passage with his pulse out and ready to fire—that, in fact, he would have to aim and fire from that very slope.
But after all this tracking, they couldn’t give up and start over just because it was momentarily difficult.
At that moment the thought came into his head: Don’t go on. Vas is planning to kill you.
This is stupid, thought Nafai. It’s one thing to be afraid of the traverse—I’m only human. But if Vas wanted to kill me, he had only to shrug when I was passing behind him on the ledge just now.
Don’t take another step.
And leave the family without meat, because I got a sudden attack of jitters? Not a chance.
Nafai swallowed his fear and moved across the face. He arched his body out a little, so that there would be the greatest possible pressure and therefore the greatest possible friction on the soles of his climbing boots. Even so, he could feel that there was too much give—this was very dangerous indeed, and shooting from this point would be almost impossible.
He reached the point where he could at last see all of the area that had been hidden before, and now he stopped and looked for the animal. He couldn’t see it. This sometimes happened—especially because they hunted in silence. Vas would lead him to an animal with good natural camouflage, and when Nafai got within range, the animal would see or smell him and freeze, becoming almost completely invisible. Sometimes it took a long time before the animal moved and Nafai could see him. This was going to be one of those waiting games. Nafai hated it that he would have to do his waiting on this traverse, but he was perfectly visible now, and if he moved any closer the animal would bolt and they would have to start over.
He gingerly shifted his hands so that all his weight was on his feet and the hand without the pulse, then brought the pulse to where he could easily aim at any point on the face of the mountain before him. Was the animal in those shrubs? Perhaps behind a rock, ready to emerge at any moment?
Holding the same pose in that awkward place was hard. Nafai was strong, and used to holding still for long periods of time—but this posture was one he had never had to hold before. He could feel sweat dripping down his forehead. If it got in his eye it would sting mercilessly, mixed as it was with dust from his face. Yet there was no way he could move to wipe it away without spooking the animal.