Past Imperative

by Dave Duncan

  The building was a vague echo of some ruined Greek temple, with remains of a circle of pillars on a paved plinth. Beyond that lay jungle. It had a humid, tropical smell. There were mosquitoes, although any attempt to swat them—any sudden movement at all—brought on the terrible muscle cramps. Even resting, his whole body ached from them.

  His tongue had found two gaping holes in his teeth. They felt enormously larger than they would look, of course, but again Creighton’s prediction had been correct. The fillings were back on Earth, in the grass of Wiltshire. So were his stitches and sticking plaster; his face was caked with blood from the reopened wound on his temple. It drew insects.

  Bodies all over the place, five of them. Expect friends or enemies, Creighton had said, but obviously both had been waiting. There had been an ambush and a battle. Had Edward crossed over at the same time as Creighton, would he also now be stiffening in that charnel house? He might as well be—for what did a man do in a strange world when he could not speak the language, had no friends, no money, nor even any concept of who his friends and enemies were? Why had Bloody Idiot Creighton been so secretive about what Edward was to expect?

  And the girl—who had brought her here and why? Was one of these dead men her father, perhaps? She was understandably terrified, of course, shaking almost as much as he was. Every few minutes she would jump at some shadow, but for her age she was doing amazingly well. She had a pronounced limp, which made her an unsteady support. Every lurch, every effort to lift the staff, threatened to make his muscles cramp up in knots.

  She seemed pathetically eager to help and please. And since she showed no signs of wanting to add Edward’s corpse to the collection, he must assume that she was a friend. Her impatience suggested that she had some associates waiting, or a safe refuge. Transportation, perhaps. At the very least she would know how to get word to the Service that Cameron Exeter’s son had arrived on Nextdoor.

  48

  THINKING MONEY, ELEAL AWOKE AT FIRST LIGHT, HAVING slept very little, and poorly. The bed she had chosen was gravelly, but the only reasonably flat area near the shelter. D’ward had suffered even in his sleep. His moans and cries had disturbed her often and she had gone to inspect him several times.

  She threw off her rug and went to take another look. He was sleeping peacefully. She had washed the blood from his face, but the pad of moss she had bound to his head was caked. She had also bathed as many of his scrapes as she could without being indecent, although by the time she and Porith had brought him in, he had been more or less unconscious.

  She glanced around the shadowy gully. Where was the mad old hermit? Very likely he was curled up under a bush somewhere nearby, but she did not know where. With any luck he was already out hunting breakfast, three breakfasts. Well, she would enlist his aid later. Right now she had some pillage to attend to.

  She clambered up the bank and set off back to the Sacrarium. The bodies would have to be buried, or disposed of in some other way if Porith had no spade, and she had seen no signs of one. T’lin’s friends or more of Zath’s reapers might investigate the ruin soon, and there was always the chance of a stray pilgrim. Whoever found those five corpses would surely raise a hue and cry. She did not want that, so she would have Porith remove them. First they should be looted. Almost certainly there would be money on some of those dead men and she did not see why she should share it with Porith Molecatcher. He had no use for silver and she did.

  She would also collect Sister Ahn’s magic sword and present it to the Liberator. Anyone with so many enemies should be armed, and tall, lean men like D’ward always looked good with swords dangling at their belts. It would certainly look better on him than it had on Sister Ahn.

  The walk seemed much shorter than it had the night before, especially when she had been half-carrying D’ward. Grown men were heavy, even young, skinny ones. From that point of view, a baby would have been much easier to manage.

  The sun rose while she was working her way along the cliff top. It warmed her and revived her. Birds sang cheerfully. She saw the pillars and turned away from the cliff, moving with more care amid the trees. Soon she passed the spot where D’ward had collapsed. She had left him there while she went and fetched Porith. He had been very unwilling—she had almost had to punch him to make him come back and help her. Stupid, crazy old man!

  She reached the Sacrarium steps…

  The bodies had gone.

  She stood like a tree, staring in disbelief. Nothing stirred. Eventually she crept forward and took a closer look. There were dried bloodstains on the stone, nothing more.

  She soon discovered a trampled trail through the woods, leading to the cliff. Someone had dragged the corpses along there—probably just one man, she thought, or the weeds would not be so crushed. She found a fragment of black cloth snagged on a thorn.

  At the edge she lay on her tummy and peered over. Far below her, Susswater was a slowly roiling yellow snake. She could guess that it would be a deafening torrent if she were down there, but from up here its motion was barely detectable, just a hint of life, like muscle moving below skin. Specks of birds were circling about halfway up the cliff, so some of the bodies might have caught on rocks.

  Who could have done this? Certainly no stray pilgrim would have chanced by in the middle of the night. Old Porith Mole-catcher was too frightened of the reapers. There might be more reapers about, and she reminded herself that she could not recognize a reaper unless he was wearing his work clothes. T’lin Dragontrader might have escaped and returned. Or the Service he had mentioned might have sent more agents. The reapers she did not want. The Service blasphemed, so she thought she probably did not want that either. In any case, she had no idea who the Service was, or where it could be found. D’ward must know, and he could decide.

  She found Porith drinking at a pool some distance upstream from his shelter. She knelt down on the edge of the gully and remarked cheerfully, “Good morning!”

  He jumped like a frog and then scowled up at her.

  “Did you move the dead bodies from the Sacrarium?” she demanded.

  He shook his head, mad eyes wide.

  “What’s for breakfast?”

  He scowled even more at that, and shook his head. Then he pointed in the general direction of the cave and made a “Git!” motion.

  “You wish my friend and myself to depart?”

  Emphatic nod.

  “I’m sure we will withdraw as soon as he is rested. But right now he’s still very weak and must be fattened up and strengthened for the journey. Red meat and lots of it!”

  She tried a winning smile and it was poorly received.

  “Don’t you make obscene gestures at me, Porith Molecatcher! You’re a priest, you said. Well, this is gods’ work. You’re mentioned in the prophecy, the Filoby Testament, and Holy Visek is god of prophecy. So the gods know you and what you’re doing, and they expect you to give succor to the Liberator. The seeress said so!”

  Glare.

  “Breakfast, if you please?”

  Eleal rose and walked away with as much dignity as her limp allowed. Ambria Impresario would have been proud of her.

  She found D’ward sitting outside the cave. He smiled weakly at her and said, “Eleal!”

  “Godsbless, D’ward! Have you remembered how to speak yet?”

  He looked at her blankly. His eyes were intensely blue, although his hair was as black as any she had ever seen. She would not call him handsome, she decided. He was plain. He was bony. On the other hand he was certainly not ugly.

  It was hardly fair to judge him now. His features were pale and drawn, his arms and legs a mess of scrapes and bruises. Caked blood disfigured his bandage and his mouth was swollen where he had bitten his lips. All in all, though, he was alert and probably on the mend. He seemed older than he had in the night. Lots of men shaved their faces, especially Thargians. Golfren and K�
�linpor did because they played juvenile roles sometimes and could add a false beard when they needed one. Boys like Klip Trumpeter did, because their whiskers were still patchy.

  “Drink?” she said. She mimed drinking and pointed to the stream. “Water?”

  He nodded. “Drink.”

  She took a gourd down and brought it back full. She taught him I drink and you drink.

  “I drink,” he said, and drank. His hands trembled. Smile, gibberish.

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you?”

  She nodded.

  He tapped his bandage and said, “Thank you,” again. He had a very winning smile.

  Eleal made herself comfortable and began lessons: man, woman, boy, girl, tree, sky, fingers, happy, sad, angry…

  Edward was one big ache. Every muscle was bruised from the cramps, and he had battered all his bones repeatedly against stone paving. The spasms had stopped, though, and his head was clearing. He felt giddy if he tried to stand, but he would be all right in a day or so.

  Nextdoor was surprisingly Earthlike—gravity and temperature, sky and clouds and sun all much the same. The plants looked like vegetation he had seen in the south of France, and the day was going to be hot accordingly. Nevertheless, this was not Earth. The moon had been very wrong. The beetles had eight legs.

  Ridiculous! His mind rejected the evidence. He would wake up soon and find himself back in Albert Memorial. And when he did, he would refuse any more drugs!

  He could recall seeing metal swords in the night, but not firearms. That put the culture somewhere between the Stone Age and the Renaissance, quite a gap. Both Eleal and he were dressed in very simple garments like overgrown undervests, leaving arms and shoulders and lower legs exposed. Natives in Kenya could get by in such costumes, or even less, but he would be arrested if he tried to walk along an English beach like this. The homespun material had never seen the looms of Manchester. That did not mean that there was no advanced civilization around somewhere. Earth had its Nyagathas as well as its Londons. A world was a big place and he must not judge this one by a hole in the woods.

  The accommodation left a lot to be desired. He did not remember arriving at the cave. The girl could not have carried him by herself, so she had friends around somewhere. And probably enemies also, else why was she hiding him here? Her obvious intent to teach him the language suggested that she was not expecting any English-speaking collaborators to arrive in the near future. He’d learned German by spending a summer in Heidelberg with the Schweitzes, but Frau Schweitz had been proficient in English. It would be tougher without an interpreter to clear up misunderstandings, even if he did have a knack for languages.

  Eleal was a pretty thing, with curly hair and a snub nose. He guessed she was eleven or twelve, no more. She had a deformed leg. She was certainly Caucasian, and could even have been English as far as looks went. And she was a sharp little dolly. Once they had gone through everything she could point to, she fetched a fur rug and spread it out on a flat rock. It was full of fine brown sand and she used this as a drawing board. Then the conversation began to grow interesting.

  Four moons? Trumb, Ysh, Eltiana, Kirb’l. Two men, two women—meaning gods and goddesses, of course. The sun was Wyseth and both, which seemed odd. Well, now he was starting to get a feel for the genders. All languages except English had gender problems, and even in English ships and whales were feminine.

  Eleal, Ysh, Eltiana. That was why the girl laughed when he tried to correct her pronunciation of his name—it must sound feminine to her. She was as fussy as a Frenchman about pronunciation. He tried his surname, Exeter, and she grinned again. “Kisster?”

  He decided he would rather be D’ward than Kisster.

  He sketched the ruined temple, and learned its name, or the word for temple. Or the word for ruin? She began to tell him the story with gestures and illustrations. She had gone there by herself, apparently—he wondered why. Creighton had appeared and her word, “Foop!” sounded much like the “Plop!” he might have used. She knew Creighton’s name! Then two men had run in, separately, T’lin and Gover. She looked inquiringly; he shook his head to show that the names meant nothing to him.

  He tried “Service” and “Chamber,” but those meant as little to her. Nor did “Olympus,” which Creighton had mentioned as if it were the Service’s headquarters. But all those words were obviously codes, club talk that members of the Service used among themselves. The inhabitants of this world would not call it Nextdoor, nor yet the equivalent of that expression. They would just call it the World. Olympus might be a private house in some city as far from here as London was from Stonehenge.

  A whole world to explore? Even Columbus had not blundered into anything quite so unthinkable.

  Columbus had not wanted to rush home and enlist in the army, either, but Edward did. The only way he could do that was to locate the Service, and that meant he must learn to talk. He hauled his mind back to work.

  Then he recalled two words he already knew in this unnamed language.

  “Vurogty Migafilo?”

  The girl started and clapped her hands in delight. She pointed southeast. “Magafilo!”

  Migo, Creighton had said, meant a village in the genitive case, so maga must be nominative or dative. The language was inflected, like Latin.

  At that moment a third person joined the group. Edward had not heard the apparition approach and his start of surprise gave him a shocking spasm of cramp in his back.

  Robinson Crusoe, or the Wild Man of the Woods? No it was Ben Gunn, straight out of Treasure Island. Emaciated and weather-beaten, with untamed white hair and beard, this near-naked scarecrow could pass as an Indian fakir. Obviously he was the owner of the cave and Edward had slept in his bed. The glint in his crazy eyes was distinctly unfriendly, implying that hermits did not appreciate uninvited guests. He had brought a bag of berries and some dirty tubers. He dropped them and spun on his leathery heel to leave.

  Edward said the words that seemed to mean, “Thank you.”

  The girl spouted a long, angry speech. The hermit turned back and fixed his glittery, Ancient Mariner gaze on Edward. He could not possibly be as deranged as he looked, could he?

  Edward pointed to the cave and said, “Thank you,” again.

  The hermit showed his teeth in a sneer and stalked away without a word. Unfriendly chappie!

  “Porith,” Eleal said, pointing at the scrawny back vanishing upstream. She stuck her tongue out and cut it off with a finger.

  Edward thought Good God! and confirmed his understanding with more gestures. Why would anyone cut out a man’s tongue? Perjury? Sedition? Blasphemy, perhaps?

  He tried to convey the question but either did not succeed or did not understand the answer.

  One look at Porith’s offering made him nauseous. He explained that with more gestures and pushed it all to the girl. She ate while continuing her story of the night’s events. Eleal was quite a storyteller. Even understanding less than a tenth of her words, Edward could appreciate her dramatic performance. She rolled her eyes and waved her hands until he was hard put to keep a straight face.

  She began using berries and roots to denote the characters on stage. The roots were the baddies. She explained them by cutting imaginary corn with a sickle. He nodded, recalling Creighton’s warning of reapers. Soon, though, his head ached with the effort of trying to memorize so many words at one sitting. He would forget most of them. It was like playing charades with no one to tell you if you had guessed right. What did she mean by reapers, the sun, a crescent, and kneeling?

  The reapers sounded very much like the dreaded thugs of India, the murderous worshipers of Kali. The British had struggled for years to wipe out thuggee.

  They went back to the temple story and Eleal dropped a hint of advanced technology. Possibly she was fantasizing or had made a mistake, but it sounded as if Crei
ghton had killed one of the reapers with a loud noise—a gun, obviously!

  The picture was becoming clearer. Eleal had gone to spy, by herself. Creighton had crossed over, arriving dazed and shocked. The next two arrivals, T’lin and Gover…how did Eleal know their names? Those words might not be names at all but visible categories like “policeman” or “Chinaman.” Whoever or whatever they were, the “t’lin” and the “gover” had welcomed Creighton, so they were almost certainly Service. They must have brought a gun for him, because then the first reaper had attacked and Creighton had shot him dead.

  The girl’s observations might be more reliable than her beliefs. She thought the reapers came from the god of death. Of course! Earthquakes came from Poseidon and thunder from Thor, yes? The reapers belonged to, or were agents of, the Chamber. But who were the Chamber? Who were the Service?

  The T’lin man had escaped. He was Edward’s road to sanity and assistance. He was the lead to the Service and Home and duty.

  “T’lin! Er, want? T’lin!” he said.

  Eleal scowled and said something about T’lin and gods and bad.

  Nextdoor certainly seemed to have gods in both abundance and variety.

  “No religion is wholly bad,” the guv’nor had told him often enough. “Without gods of some sort, life seems to have no meaning, so mortals need gods. But no religion is wholly good, either. Every religion at some time or another has persecuted strangers, stoned prophets, burned heretics, or extorted wealth from the poor.”

  Edward did not believe in gods. He believed in progress and love and tolerance and ethics. He did not think Nextdoor was going to change his mind.