by Demir Barlas
Del was Astrid’s echo. She had the same wheat-colored hair hacked somewhere between the length of vanity and the needs of convenience. She had the same lean, vision-sharpened face, although softened by the final cotton of childhood. She bore herself as seriously and decisively as Astrid.
Nya was too young to have much character in her face, but whatever was distinct in her told of Topaz. Her father had a certain rotundity of face and shoulder that had passed to her. What had sneered and festered in his face was still happy in hers.
Del felt unexpected and disturbing strength in Nya’s hand until the younger girl let go in order to lower herself closer to the empty cage.
“I had two birds,” Del told Nya, but, in the little girl’s eyes, the cage possessed none of the magic of once-inhabited things.
“Where are they?”
Nya’s voice was by turns piping and violent, the remembered duet of her dead parents’ quarrels. Del couldn’t answer the little girl’s question without crying, so she ignored it.
“Are you hungry?”
“Where’s my mama?”
Astrid pulled the side-flap back and saw the two girls waiting for her. She walked into the yurt, letting the flap close behind her, and kneeled down next to Nya. The little girl had been waiting to cry, and she abandoned herself to the Knower’s arms. With Nya’s head buried in her tunic, Astrid looked at Del, wondering why her daughter hadn’t joined the embrace. Then Astrid saw it again—the same reluctance born in Del that had matured in Riku, the lonely awareness that the Knower must be shared with all the Redcolds. But it was gone already. Del joined her mother and Nya in their embrace, aware that this little girl must be her sister now.
Riku, practical Riku, stood outside Topaz’s yurt to fortify it from the curiosity of the gathering Redcolds. At least forty of them had made their way through the outer swirl of the encampment.
The Redcolds were a long-boned, robust people whose physiognomy reflected the bygone peoples of the Laurasian Empire—barbarians amicably blended with city-dwellers, a crazy rainbow of survivors. The main occupations of the Redcold men were repairing wagon wheels, wrestling lust-maddened oxen, dueling, and beating metal into diverse implements; these tasks demanded musculature, and the men who approached the yurt were only slightly smaller versions of Riku. The Redcold women were agriculturalists, but, most importantly, links to a wisdom unsuited for the trembling spirits of men. The older Redcold women, who could never be Knowers, were as vulgar and credulous as their men, and they came to gape at the yurt, but the younger women—chastened by their spiritual training—kept away.
Riku remained there with arms crossed, chin resting on the knob of his gigantic axe, and the sight of him was enough to keep all but the Redcold children at a respectful distance from the scene of the murder.
Riku was no Knower, but he was an attentive and subordinate husband, and he knew that Astrid had left the yurt and was heading for him. The very glyph of duty, he turned to the north before she came, and she was reassured by his stolidity. On a whim, she stopped ten steps away and looked at him intently, as if transmitting a thought. Riku smiled slowly—a smile of decaying charm, as his teeth were getting worse.
“All right,” he nodded as he left. Long marriage had been the only infrastructure necessary to convey Astrid’s request to summon the other members of the kurultai.
In twenty minutes, the kurultai had gathered on the edge of the encampment. They sat on special rocks found near a quartz mine centuries ago and added to the store of Redcold riches; flat and luminous rocks that were incongruous with Riku’s huge body, prompting him to stand while the others sat. There was Astrid, of course; nothing was possible without her. There was Riku, there on the strength of no spousal nepotism but in his capacity as chief wrangler—that is, Kayan of the Oxen, a title he had (with various rich ironies) given himself to feel less ridiculous. There was Xanthippe, ageless and apple-faced keeper of the knowledge below Astrid’s holy station—the communal memory of where things were, drawer of maps and memorizer of lore, observer and supervisor of the girls from whose ranks the next Knower must come. Xanthippe, having seen and survived more than any Redcold, was airy and light of step, a human butterfly. Next to her sat Ott, who had been nominated by the tribe for his immeasurable and perhaps divine resistance to kimiz, which, next to Astrid’s knowledge, Riku’s strength, and Xanthippe’s wisdom, was the greatest strength any Redcold had. Men have been made representatives, and even gods, for less.
“Nothing,” Astrid said. “I fasted. I sat before the fire. Nothing.”
Ott looked uneasy. Knowers came and went, just as kut entered and left the spirit. If a full moon rose on the Knower’s ignorance, her favor with the Goddess would be at an end, and the moon would be full soon. That would mark the beginning of a terrible period for the Redcolds. Until the Goddess breathed her favor into another Knower, the Redcolds would be at the mercy of the Storm. The Storm! The Storm whose hurricane winds might be avoided, but even proximity to which brought all-consuming madness.
Riku walked to Astrid’s side and laid a callused hand on her shoulder.
“Four dead,” Astrid continued, briefly squeezing Riku’s hand.
“Only one of them counts,” her husband suggested.
“The Knower was surely within her rights,” Ott ventured. “There wasn’t time for deliberation.”
Astrid stood up, letting Riku’s hand fall away. She felt a new, deeper exhaustion. Not for the first time, she felt ungrateful for her gift. She had suffered under the failure to protect Farinaz, but the Goddess had failed to either protect the world or damn the humans that defaced it.
As long as the Redcolds were safe, the privations of displacement were acceptable, and squinting of the spiritual eye could even contort them into pleasure. But the Redcolds weren’t safe. Farinaz could be choked to death in her sleep. Nya and Balder could be left motherless, as one day Del might be. And, heretical to think, weren’t the Redcolds motherless? Only the voice of safety spoke to them. Astrid had pored through the factbooks, had found the Chronicles of Old Laurasia and read of the first Knowers and their lives on these very steppes however many years ago. The Goddess spoke freely and volubly then. The Goddess and the Gods, and even the trees and rocks and mountains spoke, and humanity and nature were intertwined, and now nature consisted of the equally silent poles of survival and destruction.
Astrid looked at the kurultai’s members, none of whom—not even Riku—knew what really passed within her. She felt the need to return to practicalities.
“Nya and Balder will go to my yurt.”
Ott, again out of his depth, only nodded his head, and Xanthippe looked pleased, and Riku, though unconsulted, was at least unsurprised, or had the dignity to look unsurprised. Astrid realized, too late, that she had assumed his cooperation, and she looked at her husband to engage in one of those wordless conversations that exist even at the extremities of human life.
Astrid’s adoption of Nya and Balder should have been carried out with public justification. The power of the Knower cast a necessary shadow over civil life, over even the ancient matters of childbirth and adoption, marriage and murder, but she was no tyrant. Astrid should have appeared with Nya and Balder in front of the entire tribe, where the children would have been asked for their opinion, and potential claimants would have been asked for theirs, but the Knower was willing to buck the democracy of the Redcolds in this matter. Farinaz had been Astrid’s friend—one of the few friends among worshippers and dependents—and Astrid would not allow Nya and Balder into some other yurt.
Del had remained with Nya while Astrid was with the kurultai. The older girl was selfishly glad. She had lost her birds, after all, but won a little sister. The ugly facts that had forged this new tie were not of interest to Del. The world had been ugly to her even since the flight of Zebra and Feathers. Unlike some of the Redcolds, Del saw no beauty or meaning in the Storm. The Storm, too, was part of the ugly world, something to look away from,
to forget.
Del worked in silence in the middle of the yurt. There was a heater there—a sleek, expanding circle of silver that brought water to boil and ox-meat to palatability.
“What’s that?” Nya asked, peeing closely at the heater.
“Salvage,” Del explained. “I found it in a Sinwoyese caravan before you were born. Look, it heats things. Look! There’s water in there. I’m making us grass tea.”
Nya clapped her hands happily, reminding Del how very small she was. And, with the inner eye, Del saw that Nya was returning through some portion of the darkness.
Del completed the preparation of the tea, which, to the Redcolds, was an art and ceremony. Ordinarily, the tea was brewed outside, in small pots heated over true fires and beneath a jealous sky, but Del had caught the habit of using the heater. She had even converted her parents to its use. With Astrid, this was an easy task, as her mother routinely fiddled with the knowledge and technology of the past. In the same downed skyfaust in which Del had found the heater, Astrid had found the factbooks. They had been hours ahead of a storm, or they would surely have stayed longer and taken more from the iron guts of that wonderful machine.
Astrid and Del had pored over the factbooks; Riku had not. At first, these little mechanisms, powered by a deathless cell, had displayed pointless symbols, but, in time, Astrid had touched something that yielded the runic alphabet recognizably that of the Redcolds, that is, of the distant ancestors of the Redcolds. That runic alphabet had been presented next to other letters, those of Revised New Laurasian, and, in this way, Astrid had learned to read the majority language of the Laurasian Empire and unlock the knowledge of the factbooks. Mother and daughter had passed many heady nights in the glow of the factbooks while Riku snored, contentedly remote from knowledge in his corner of the yurt. They had read together. The factbooks’ digital glow, now legible to them, told them of the world that had been before the Storm, a world divided between two mighty powers—the Dragon of Laurasia and the Eagle of the Untied States—who had gone to war.
The factbooks were, of course, products of the time before, and in the early stages of, that war; they were necessarily silent on the nature and causes of the Storm that defined the world of the Redcolds.
Chronologically, the last disclosure of the factbooks was the war itself, which was attributed to something called Coastal Expansionism. There were many terms of this sort, which, however diligently they were explained, could make but little sense to Astrid or Del or any Redcold. But the details were unnecessary. The factbooks disclosed the existence of the older world, the world whose traces all Redcolds had seen in the degraded buildings and discarded machines and ruined mechanical giants that scattered the landscape of their endless wanderings.
The water finished boiling, and Del added leaves to it. She waited for the herbage to impart its flavor to the water, then added milk for sweetness and body. She handed Nya’s cup to her.
“It’s still hot,” Del warned. “Wait a bit.”
“I can drink hot tea,” Nya bragged, and she did. Though the tea stung her lips and throat, she took as big a sip as the more experienced Del. The tea was good enough to demand silence, even from children, and Del and Nya took their time finishing it. Del hoped that accumulated normalcies of this kind would remove the shadow of Nya’s previous life, and she felt a little of the responsibility that her mother felt—the responsibility of the whole and strong for the fragmented and drifting.
Astrid returned soon, and, wordlessly, Del prepared tea for her. Astrid made her way to the center of the yurt and sat cross-legged.
“Well, I’m your mother,” she told Nya, and the little girl hugged her. Astrid was divided. She had almost forgotten the treasured feeling of a little child, almost a baby, in her lap. But she knew that her yurt, like all the others, contained a cautious balance that might be ruined by the entry of innocence as well as guilt. Happiness was fragile, and Astrid knew herself and Del and Riku to be happy.
Despite Nya’s acceptance of a new mother, she would only sleep next to Del. Wordlessly, Astrid and Riku agreed to sleep next to each other, an arrangement lately voided by the weight of marriage. Astrid snored tremendously, and Riku thrashed his great limbs in reaction to unremembered nightmares, and they had peaceably gravitated to private corners of the yurt. Del’s bedding ordinarily occupied the middle of the yurt—and it was here, too, that Nya insisted on sleeping.
Astrid and Riku lay awake silently until the waxing gibbous moon was visible from the aperture at the top of the yurt, which was left open on warm nights. Astrid and Riku had drawn closer, the Knower by now almost enfolded into the apologetic bulk of her husband. They held each other with the closeness known only to parents whose early intimacies have been consumed by the immeasurably greater heat of parenthood itself.
“We always wanted another,” Riku reminded Astrid. As usual, their thoughts had met each other in the silence.
“We did.”
“No one else would have taken her.”
“I know.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I’m scared, Riku.”
“Your dream will come.”
Astrid admired and resented Riku’s certainty, but admiration (and exhaustion) slowly beat resentment. In daylight, she had killed a man, lost a friend, and gained a daughter. In darkness, she must see the next safe passage for the Redcolds. So much ahead…so much behind…but Riku was there, and he held her gently, and she fell asleep.
And she dreamed. She was in the dark place—the place before the world, the place in which Itugen’s hair wove itself into knotted possibilities. This was not the void. It was a seeing and disclosing darkness, warm and compassionate. Presently, the Goddess came. Her eyes were black, her hair red, and her skin the color of earth. She floated above Astrid and communicated in strings of thought that rose slightly above the whispers of the universe. These thoughts directed Astrid to a coming cliff, and Astrid knew that she was to bury Farinaz at its peak. Next, the thoughts gave Astrid a vision of herself at the peak, scanning the horizon. From that vantage point, the astral Astrid saw a thin and golden path stretching into the distance, and she knew that this was the path to safety.
But this path was not the only vision she was gifted. There was, on the other pole of the horizon, away from safety, something that Astrid had only ever seen in the factbooks: A bunker. It was a modest structure that jutted some twenty feet out of the underlying rock.
By another intimation, the Goddess told Astrid that this building was unholy—as unholy as any token of the mechanized past that had nearly killed the world. It was unholy, but it was also the gateway to a greater power than the Goddess would ever again accord the Redcolds.
Astrid had no opportunity to question Itugen, because the dream was over. She woke with a start.
Returning to consciousness was not the relief it should have been, for, although Astrid had seen the next path, she had also seen her first temptation. To choose the building, she knew, would be to choose the power of civilization—perhaps the secret to quelling the Storm and rebuilding the human world. The cost of such power would be loss of spirit. Astrid trembled with the thought of it; with the knowledge, too, that she was considering the path that led to the building.
Astrid looked at Riku and saw him as the epitome of the Redcolds: Happy, stupid, sleeping dreamlessly, and waiting for her to keep them safe. Then she looked at Del, who slept with a protective arm over Nya. The bloody story of Farinaz and Topaz and Nya was also humanity’s story—the Redcolds themselves had been orphaned by the ancient empires.
There was a slight rustling at the entryway of the yurt. Astrid shook Riku into wakefulness. The Knower pulled the flap back to see Ott standing there with Balder—Balder, the boy of twelve, Farinaz’s son, who had been cutting wood. Astrid extended her hand to Balder, but he wouldn’t take it. He stared stubbornly at the ground. He had been rebelliously deep in the forest, courting the risk of distance that boys inevitably did, and it ha
d taken a long time for the Redcold scouting parties to find him.
“Come on,” Astrid smiled. “You’re with us now.”
“I could have killed him,” was Balder’s only response.
“Not your fault.”
“Is Nya here?”
“Sleeping safely. Come on. We have a place for you.”
Balder looked up at last. He was round-faced and innocent, and Astrid surely loved him, and he entered the yurt.
3 ASSHOLE-TO-ASSHOLE COMMUNICATION
When Masters had awoken, Non-Henry had been quite close by, in Gallery 427, and in a bad mood. The android’s relations with Salt 272 were volatile. They were, on that day, in one of their quarreling phases, as 272 had accused Non-Henry at cheating at cards by relying on spectra of vision unavailable to humans, and Non-Henry had reminded 272 that neither of them was human, and Salt had gone off in a huff. Non-Henry had regretted his role in the exchange, but, because he was not as vulnerable to loneliness as Salt, he waited patiently for 272’s apology.
Non-Henry had been shocked to receive news of a human’s waking. He was vaguely aware of a long-ago fellow who had entered the Fluid for reasons of preservation alone (it was the kind of exceptional knowledge that acquired value in the homogeneity of Seaboard, which only he and the Salts otherwise disrupted). Non-Henry had sprinted to 419, not waiting for Marlo’s offer of a tube. He reached 419 just as Marlo decanted the general there from a vent, having cleaned and clothed him. He saw Masters’ muscular bulk descend incongruously leaflike to the floor, with Marlo’s hologram above him.