DARK IS THE SUN

by Philip José Farmer

  DARK IS THE SUN

  Philip Jose Farmer

  Philip Jose Farmer

  DARK IS THE SUN

  DEDICATION

  In alphabetical order, to my granddaughters Andrea Josephsohn and Kimberley Ladd; my daughter,

  Kristen; my grandson Matthew Josephsohn; my son, Philip Laird; my granddaughter Stephanie

  Josephsohn; my grandson Torin Paul Farmer. And to any descendants of my wife, Bette Virginia Andre, and of myself fifteen billion years from now, when this story takes place.

  1

  BLACK was the sun; bright, the sky.

  Under the arc packed with dead and living stars, dark or blazing gas clouds and galaxies, on an Earth in which lay the bones or over which blew the dust of seven hundred fifty-four million or so generations,

  Deyv walked toward his destiny.

  "Look for a mate and find a dragon" was a proverb of the tribe.

  If you were a pessimist, it sounded ominous. If you were an optimist, it sounded rewarding. There were good dragons and there were evil. Or so Deyv understood. He'd never seen one.

  Like most people, Deyv's attitude depended upon the circumstances. At the moment, he was scared and so pessimistic.

  Deyv of the Red Egg walked away from the Turtle Tribe of the Upside-Down House. Towering behind him was the House, a cylinder three hundred feet in diameter, made of indestructible metal. Its red, green, and white checked walls slanted slightly so that the round base, ten stories above the ground, afforded an unimpeded view of the earth directly below. The conical tip was buried ten stories deep.

  Once, according to what the old women said, the House had been entirely under the ground. But erosion and numerous earthquakes had pushed it up ten generations ago.

  To Deyv's left, in the center of the clearing, stood the soul-egg tree. Its gnarly trunk was bare of branches for twenty feet, and then the branches began that formed a cone standing on its apex. The bark gleamed red, white, green, blue, and purple, so heavily impregnated with quartz that it was hard as rock.

  From the branches dangled the fruit, the soul eggs, each as big as Deyv's fist. Around the tree was a circle of dry, pale dirt a hundred feet in diameter, and outside the circle marched four bowmen. Up in the tower, near the base of the tree, were four watchers, each ready to beat on a drum if an enemy human or a predator beast was sighted.

  Behind Deyv came the rest of the tribe—men, women, children, dogs, and cats. All the people were shouting the ritual encouragement, except for the appointed insulter.

  "Yaaa, Deyv of the Red Egg! See how he has to be driven forth into the jungle! Does he go bravely like our heroic foreparents or like his own great-souled father? Naaah! He goes trembling, legs shaking, his bowels ready to loose themselves with fear, and that red egg .. . ! Ha! That red egg! It betrays the color of his soul! It's green, green with fear! Rabbit! Mouse! March like a man, like a warrior of the Turtles.

  Don't slink like a coyote!"

  Gurni, the insulter, was having fun. He was also getting revenge for what Deyv had once cried at him when he had gone out to get a mate.

  Deyv looked down at the soul egg hanging from a leather cord around his neck. His face felt warm, and he could see his body, except where the breechclout covered it, turning red. It was true. The translucent stone, a pale scarlet when he was in a good mood, had become streaked with green. The green pulsed swiftly as if it were connected with his hammering heart. Which, in a sense, it was.

  How humiliating! How embarrassing!

  "Don't pay any attention to that big-mouthed'blow-wind!" his mother shouted almost in his ear. "No man or woman has ever gone out on a mate-hunt without showing some green. Except the hero Keelrow, and that was five generations ago, and maybe if s all a lie about him, anyway!"

  The shaman, Agorw, danced up alongside Deyv. He wore a bonnet of tall feathers; the cheeks of his face and buttocks were marked with three vertical stripes, red, white, and blue; his breechclout was painted with the crooked cross; his knees were bound in leather, from which dangled seven coils of human hair; one hand was inserted inside a skull of a giant turtle and the other shook a staff from which hung three empty turtle shells. His own soul egg was a deep blue shot with pulsating aquamarine streaks.

  "Shame on you, woman!" he cried. "The ghost of Keelrow will come to you in your dreams and put horns on your husband's head. And the child will drink you dry!"

  "See these!" Deyv's mother yelled. "Do you think any baby, even if he were as big and fat as you, could empty these?"

  The tribe howled with merriment, and the shaman, his face red, stomped off out of Deyv's sight.

  For a moment, Deyv forgot his fear and embarrassment. He chuckled. His mother was afraid of nothing.

  He wished he were. But she was like him in that she had a quick temper and sometimes had to pay for it

  The shaman would get back at her somehow. However, she would not regret her words. She was willing to take the consequences. Especially in this situation, where her pride in her baby overrode anything else.

  Deyv, her baby, was six feet two inches high, the tallest of the tribe. His shoulders were broad, but he had the long legs and wiry build of a long-distance runner. His skin was a dark copper; his hair, black as a fly and as wavy as a wind-rippled brook. The forehead was high and wide; the brows, beetling; the nose, a hawk's; the lips, thick; the chin, round and clefted. By his features alone, any of the other people for sixty miles around would have known he was a Turtle.

  He wore a shell of the checkered turtle on his head, a scarlet breechclout, and calf-high leather boots. A

  leather belt held a leather scabbard containing a slim sword with two cutting edges. Also held by the belt was a stone tomahawk. Over one shoulder was a case holding a blowgun, a compression cylinder, and in its pocket, twelve darts, the tips of which were coated with poison. A coiled rope was slung over the other shoulder.

  This was what every well-dressed man or woman wore when seeking a mate.

  After entering the jungle, Deyv stepped behind a delta-shaped feathery bush and parted its fronds. The tribe had turned away except for his mother and father and his dog, Jum. About twenty yards behind them, lying down spninxlike, was his cat, Aejip.

  Deyv waited until his parents had at last walked back toward the House. Then he whistled, and Jum, who'd been waiting for this signal, bounded up to him. He was a large wolflike beast with big pointed upstanding ears, a crimson coat, a tail edged in black, and slanting green eyes. He licked Deyv's calf until he was told to quit, and then he sat down, his tongue hanging out. His forehead was as high as a chimpanzee's and so was his intelligence.

  Aejip was taking her time with all the nonchalance of any cat that had ever lived. When she stood, she was two and a half feet high at the shoulder. Her glossy coat was tawny and rosetted in black. Above the great yellow eyes were two vertical bkAck markings. Her forehead was as developed as Jum's.

  Deyv thought of whistling for her, but the cat had made it evident that she wasn't going to accompany her partner—no cat acknowledged a master—on his journey. Though she couldn't talk, she had put across the idea that she considered Deyv to be out of his mind. Besides, she was jealous because Deyv had been paying so much attention to Jum these past two weeks.

  So Deyv shrugged and turned, with Jum a few feet ahead of him, and proceeded down the jungle path.

  Every step that took him away from the tribe was a pace deeper into loneliness and insecurity. If he'd been accompanied by anyone on a hunt for food, one which he knew would see him back with the tribe after a sleep or even seven sleeps, he would have been happy. But to go forth by himself for only The

  Great Mother knew how long was to be shivering with fear, sick with aloneness.
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br />   Nevertheless, he was not numb. His eyes, ears, and nose were alert. Behind every bush or tree could be a poisonous snake, a corps of the great ruddy cockroaches, the thing-with-a-nose-like-a-snake, a ghostwith-

  venomous-urine, the toe fancier, or an enemy tribesman eager to remove his head and his soul egg.

  There might even be an enemy woman out to catch a mate, though these were very few.

  The wind was coming from ahead of him. Though it waved the upper leaves and caps of the tall trees, it pushed gently along the path. Still, it should carry the scent of anything ahead to Jum's nose. Anything except a ghost, and dogs were supposed to be psychically sensitive to those horrible things.

  To expect to hear anything soft but sinister nearby was to be stupid. The jungle rang, shrilled, cawed, cackled, hooted, tooted, chortled, drummed, whistled, and screeched. Most of the noisemakers were hidden, but occasionally Deyv saw a bird, a gliding mammal, a fingered bear, a creature like a fourlegged blowgun, a troop of scowl-monkeys, or a live-alone cockroach; and once he halted while a diamond-backed tortoise heaved its monstrous shelled bulk across the path. Though it was not his totem, still it was a cousin to it, and so he addressed it politely and wished it well.

  After it came a regiment of small yellow mouse-sized cockroaches, hoping to eat its dung or find a crevice between flesh and shell into which to burrow. Deyv picked up a dry stick and beat a dozen or so into paste. The survivors scampered off into the green while Deyv called after the diamond-back, "You owe me one, O mighty sister."

  Jum ate the corpses and sniffed around for more. He'd had his single between-sleeps meal, but, doglike, he would eat until he burst if he got a chance. Though it was not distasteful to Deyv, he didn't share

  Jum's food. Instead, some easily plucked large round yellow fruit, only half-eaten by the birds, tempted

  Deyv. Holding two in one hand and eating a third in the other hand, he walked along. To find food was no problem in his world. To avoid being food was.

  Only thirty sleeps before, Deyv had been with the tribe at the Place of the Trading Season. Every fortynine circuits of The Dark Beast, the nine tribes in the area put aside war and gathered peacefully at the

  Place. This was by a House occupied only by animals, birds, and insects, and possibly a nonmalignant ghost, a House centrally located. At this time, by custom immemorial and unstained by truce breaking, the tribes went down the paths and gathered at the Place. It was near a broad river in an overgrown area that was cleared every Trading Season. Here the artifacts that one tribe had and the others didn't were traded. It was a long leisurely business, with much pleasant haggling interspersed with feasts, drinking, smoking, eating of drugs, telling of erotic and sterculian jokes, athletic matches among the young men and women, exchanging of hunting information, warnings of ghosts, and boasting contests.

  Deyv's tribe traded turtle and tortoise shells, the harps made from them, a large gourd which grew only in their area, a drug made from a plant and other ingredients which could evoke ancestors for brief conversations but was, unfortunately, accompanied by devastating winds from the bowels, and an insect whose bite assured the female bitee of a very pleasurable sensation. For some reason the bite caused only an itching in the male bitee. The effects in both sexes lasted about one-fourth of the time between sleeps.

  For their trade items, the Turtle people got smoked meat of the checkered turtle, which they were forbidden to kill and which could be eaten only at certain required times; a liquor which the Coyote

  Tribe made from water seeping through a limestone cliff and a plant, the identity of which the Coyotes had kept secret for ten generations; bone noseflutes made by the Holecat Tribe, the minute carved decorations of which were beyond the artistic ability of any other tribe; a jungle pepper from the

  Whistling Squirrel Tribe; a perfume jelly from the Crawling Tree Tribe; smoked bladders guaranteed to bring good luck from the Nameless God Tribe; gourds filled with an exceedingly tasty paste from the

  Ruddy Cockroach Tribe; from the Tree-Lion Tribe birds and monkeys which could mimic speech; and soul eggs from the Red Skunk Tribe. The latter had found a burial ground of the ancients and had dared to dig up the soul eggs and barter them. These were rare and expensive items, only for the hardy shaman who was willing to take on additional ancestors and haggle for their power in his dreams.

  Each Trading Season, a tribe was appointed to be the police. The men and the childless adult females walked around with clubs and kept the peace. The unmated men and women of the tribes walked around looking each other over. Only about 5 percent were serious, since most matings took place within the tribe. But there were always those whose soul eggs did not match any eligible person of the other sex within the tribe. These, like it or not, had to get their mates from one of the other tribes.

  When a man or a woman did find a match in another tribe, a marriage was arranged. There was then the problem of which partner would have to leave his or her tribe and go with the new mate. To give up one's own people and live with foreigners was hard. But it had to be done if there was no other way out.

  The decision of which person must go to the strange tribe was quickly made. A shaman from a third tribe spun a stick with a spear point on each end into the air. If the prospective groom's point stuck in the earth when the stick landed, then he took the bride to his own tribe. If the other point plunged in, that meant that he had to go to her House.

  Deyv had wandered through the Place of the Trading Season. And, as was the age-old custom, when he saw an unmated woman, he introduced himself and then sat down to talk to her. It did not matter whether or not he found her attractive or vice versa. He must talk to her in the trading language until their soul eggs began to flash matching colors in synchronization. Or until it was evident that there would be no phasing-in.

  Deyv had been relieved when he had not matched up with any of the eligibles. There were some pretty women among the candidates, but otherwise he hadn't been attracted to them. Among the girls who would be old enough next season he'd spotted two rather likable good-lookers. All he had to do was to wait another forty-nine circuits of The Dark Beast. Then, if his egg matched one of theirs, he could marry. There would still be the agony of not knowing whether or not he'd have to go to a strange tribe.

  But that would be over quickly.

  In the meantime, he wouldn't be sexually frustrated. The Turtles, like the other tribes, had plenty of volunteers from older women, widows usually, who would like to satisfy the unmarried youths. One of these was chosen by the shaman's wife or husband and given a ritual name. Thereafter, the woman lived in a hut in which she entertained the young men. Her prestige was high, and she was always given a place of honor during the feast days.

  Those young women who'd not yet found a match were similarly entertained by an older man chosen in the same manner. If any pregnancy resulted, the child was the woman's, and when she got married her husband formally and gladly adopted the child.

  Deyv had grown fond of the woman who was taking care of him and was looking forward to spending more time with her. But a few days after he'd returned to the House, his father had called him aside. He hadn't looked happy.

  "The men's councils of the nine tribes met during the Trading Season. They decided that it was time for new blood to be brought into our land. So, each tribe must send out those young men or women who found no soul-egg mates during the Season. You are the only one of the Turtles who failed. That means, my son, that you must go, and very soon, to the lands beyond our land. You can't come back unless you bring with you a woman whose egg matches yours."

  Deyv had been so shocked he hadn't been able to say anything.

  "The same thing happened in your grandfather's time," his father had said. "It was decided that the tribe needed new blood. So his friend Atoori was sent outside the area to get a woman. He never returned; no one knows what happened to him. Another young man, Shamoom, was then sent out, and he returned with a woman from a t
ribe far in that direction."

  His father had gestured with his left hand. "She was much lighter skinned than we, and she had yellow kinky hair and blue eyes. She gave birth to two babies, Tsagi, who died before you were born, slain by a warrior of the Coyotes, and Korri, the shaman's wife."

  Deyv had gulped and had said, "I've heard the story, Father, but I didn't think much about it."

  "You'd better think about it now." Tears had rolled down his father's cheeks.

  "It is hard to see your son go into the unknown dangers of the land beyond the nine tribes. The known dangers are bad enough."

  "Is that why Mother has looked so sad the last few days?"

  "Yes."

  His father had begun weeping and sobbing, and Deyv had had to hold him for a few minutes until he had recovered. Then Deyv had stumbled off weeping to be consoled by his mother, only to end up consoling her. That evening he'd gone to Pabashum, the young unmarried-men's woman, only to have to console her.

  His dog, Jum, couldn't talk, though he did whimper a lot, but Deyv had wet him with his tears, and when

  Jum licked his face Deyv felt that he was finally being consoled. It hadn't been as satisfying as he had wished, however. His egg had been filled with roiling black clouds and dark-green streaks for days afterward.

  2

  SO here he was in the jungle, with no idea of where he would go or just how he would do what he had to do when he got there. First, though, he had to get out of the land of the nine tribes. It was now a bad time to be alone in the jungle. After fourteen sleeps of the honeymoon, the bridegrooms had to sally forth to kill a dangerous beast or an enemy tribesman and bring the head back and lay it at the feet of their women. This period would start just when he had to set out on his quest. The tribe might at least have considered this and allowed him to wait until the headhunters had gone home.