Past Imperative

by Dave Duncan

  Porith had hidden most of the food. Eleal screamed and threatened until he produced it. She wanted it for D’ward, to build up his strength.

  With much glee she showed him the passages in the Filoby Testament that mentioned her, and the others that mentioned him—. He was also sometimes identified by a title that Eleal did not even try to translate but which must be the “Liberator” Creighton had mentioned, and once he was called the son of That was a fair attempt to transliterate a name that must surely have been unique on Nextdoor. The reference had worked well enough to bring death to his parents and might yet do the same to him.

  Edward knew that Eleal was keeping secrets from him. She could follow his pidgin and gestures perfectly well when she wanted to. When he asked some question she preferred not to answer, he became completely incomprehensible and remained so until she could change the subject.

  She was very impatient to leave. He suggested that she go on ahead and he would follow or wait for her to return, but she refused, and for that he felt very grateful. He owed her his life, but to embark on a walk of perhaps several days’ duration before he recovered his strength would be real folly, risking a complete relapse. He tried to explain that.

  She managed to explain the need for haste—she had friends who would be leaving soon. He made her a promise: He must stay one more day, and he would do some walking to build up his strength, but they would leave the day after.

  50

  THE NEXT MORNING ELEAL TOOK D’WARD EASTWARD along the cliff edge. He leaned heavily on Sister Ahn’s staff and persevered until they reached cultivated fields. He needed a rest before he could walk back. In all they had covered no more than a couple of miles, yet he was exhausted and slept through the whole afternoon.

  In the heat of the day she lay on the grass and swatted flies and wondered how Uthiam had made out with Ironfaib’s Polemic, and the others in their individual pieces. She even wondered if young Gim had done well with his harp or won the gold rose for his beauty. How that would embarrass him!

  She also thumbed through the Filoby Testament. It was a terrible muddle. She had found the four references to her that Gover Envoy had mentioned. That had not been difficult, as he had marked them all in the book. The order did not seem to matter.

  Verse 386 was the important one, about clothing and washing. In Verse 401, she brought “him” to the caveman for succor, and “him” had been D’ward of course.

  Verse 475: Before the festival, Eleal will come into Sussvale with the Daughter of Irepit. The minion of Zath seeketh out the Liberator, but he will be called to repentance. Well, they had done all that! What use was a prophecy after you’d done it?

  The only Eleal prophecy she had not yet fulfilled came right at the end of the book. Out of 1102 verses altogether, there she was again in number 1098: Terrible is the justice of the Liberator; his might lays low the unworthy. He is gentle and hard to anger. Gifts he sets aside and honor he spurns. Eleal shall be the first temptation and the prince shall be the second, but the dead shall rouse him.

  What prince? Tempting to do what? A lot of the prophecies were like that—they almost meant something but not quite. Like Verse 114: Men plot evil upon the holy mountain. The servants of the one do the work of the many. They send unto D’ward, mouthing oaths like nectar. Their voices are sweet as roses, yea sweeter than the syrup that snares the diamondfly. He is lured to destruction by the word of a friend, by the song of a friend he is hurled down among the legions of death.

  The book spoke of D’ward and the Liberator separately and never said they were the same man—perhaps she was in there under other names too. Nor did it ever say who or what he was supposed to liberate.

  Sussians were very fond of liberators. This year’s tragedy was called The Tragedy of Trastos, and it was about Daltos Liberator, one of their ancient heroes, who had slain Trastos Tyrant, his own father, and brought democracy to Sussland. It was a very good tragedy, with lots of gods and goddesses. Suss would love it. At the festival it would have won the rose for the best play easily…maybe! Dolm Actor had played major roles in both the tragedy and the comedy. Dolm had been slain by Sister Ahn’s sword. K’linpor was his understudy, but Golfren was K’linpor’s, and Golfren acted like a rock.

  This was Neckday and the festival would end tomorrow. Eleal did not want to think about that. Usually the troupe stayed on in Suss, because the winning group was allowed free use of the temple amphitheater and many citizens would come to see the winning play. Those performances often brought them more money than any others in their year. But without Dolm they could not stage either the Varilian or Trastos, only the masque, and unless they had won the rose, they would not have a free theater available.

  In other words, there was a very good chance that the Trong Troupe would leave the following day, Toeday, and there was no hope of D’ward reaching Suss before then. Once the troupe had crossed Monpass, it might wander almost anywhere in Joalland.

  Eleal might never manage to get him to Suss at all, because she had no money to pay the toll over the bridge at Notby.

  There! She backed up a page in the Testament and yes, there was D’ward’s name again.

  D’ward shall become Tion. He shall give heart to the king and win the hearts of the people. D’ward shall become Courage.

  What in the world did that mean? There was nothing to say that it referred to the Liberator. What a terrible muddle! Well, at the least it proved that she would be right to take D’ward to Tion’s temple.

  51

  THEY PLANNED TO LEAVE AT DAWN THE NEXT MORNING, to make progress before the day grew hot. Edward had no idea what dangers lurked out there in the world: slavers, press-gangs, or knights in armor challenging passersby to joustings? He would have to rely on Eleal to lead him safely to wherever she thought he ought to be—for his benefit or hers. Clearly, she had plans, and they had involved careful preparation and much discussion with old Porith.

  Whatever those plans were, he would have to go along with them. He could not spend the rest of his life in a jungle tent, certainly not while there was a war on that he must fight in.

  Judging by garments looted from the dead Gover’s baggage, standard dress in Sussland was a smock of drab gray material with a touch of bright-colored embroidery on hem or shoulder strap. Eleal had been improving on one of these costumes. Below the neckband she had stitched a jagged sunburst of white cloth, cut from a flour bag. Below that again, out to either side, she had attached a green hammer and a red Ø, and underneath them, but closer together, a yellow triangle and a blue star. The colors were vital—having nothing else green to hand, she had cut a piece out of the tent to use for the hammer. This armorial creation was to be Edward’s wear. He concluded that anything so lacking in sense must obviously be very holy.

  That evening she repeated her instructions solemnly and emphatically, a ragged urchin sitting cross-legged in the dirt, literally wagging a finger at him. He was to be a gods’ man, walking to gods’ houses—a pilgrim, in other words—and he was not to speak to anyone. She would do the talking. He was not sure if she was to be his guide, pupil, or assistant, but the role seemed to be formal and well-defined. He would play the lama, she the chela. His only communication was to be a gesture of blessing, and she made him practice that.

  The idea was ingenious and might save him considerable trouble if he attracted the attention of the authorities. Nextdoor had no British consuls to stand bail or threaten to send gunboats. On the other hand, all cultures he knew of imposed certain obligations on their able-bodied young men—honest labor and military service being two that came to mind at once. This handy cop-out as a pilgrim might work for the elderly, but he worried that his ingenious young accomplice was overlooking some snag. He certainly put no faith in the addled wits of old Porith, the ex-priest. Nevertheless, having no better plan of his own to propose, Edward agreed that he would be a holy man. He just hoped he would not
be called upon to perform some sacred ritual. Public flagellation, for example.

  Before the sun rose, the travelers left their tent for the last time and ate a hurried breakfast. They scrambled down the bank and called at Porith’s cave to say farewell. Eleal gave him a kiss, which flustered him. The crazy old man was much richer than he had been before she arrived, because he had inherited all the valuables from the tent. He had resented Edward when they first met. The last couple of days he had become quite friendly.

  Edward was not sure of the proprieties of handshaking and was certainly not inclined to kiss the shaggy old gargoyle, so he used his pilgrim-blessing gesture instead, a raised palm with fingers spread. The hermit stared at him for a moment, and then sank to his knees and bowed his head.

  Eleal and Edward exchanged startled glances and took to their heels before they began to laugh. They looked back from the top of the bank, and the old man was still on his knees, as if in prayer.

  Edward trudged along the jungle path with Eleal hobbling eagerly ahead. Besides his pilgrim’s smock, he wore sandals and an absurd Chinese coolie straw hat like a wheel, all looted from the dead Gover. He leaned on his walking stick, which had belonged to some woman called Ahn, who had slain the second reaper. He was still not sure who she had been or how she had died.

  He thought he might manage five miles if he were lucky. If he were unlucky, then he would discover that beggars were set to work picking oakum or mending roads. He had already identified the first snag in Eleal’s pilgrim deception—by the rules of the game, neither of them could carry any baggage, not even a packed lunch, although he had slipped the razor and a lump of soap into his pocket when she wasn’t looking.

  When he neared the ruined temple, his skin rose in gooseflesh. The eerie sensation he had known in Winchester Cathedral and at Stonehenge was enormously magnified, into a dread sense of cold and dark and sanctity. He remembered Creighton saying he could always recognize virtuality on Nextdoor. Apparently the talent was amplified in strangers and Edward was a stranger here.

  Did portals work in both directions? He still knew the key; he could easily make himself a primitive drum. But would that key take him back to Stonehenge, or on to some other world? Even if he dared take the risk and did reach Stonehenge, he would arrive there penniless and stark naked. By now Inspector Leatherdale would have a warrant out for his arrest. There was no easy way out of this mess.

  He was glad to leave the temple behind. Beyond it the path was much clearer and in half a mile or so it emerged from the forest close to another ruin, a monumental arch. Despite Eleal’s protests, Edward went to inspect it. Once it had anchored the end of a suspension bridge. Corroded remains of chains still hung from it, and the base of a matching arch was discernible on the far side of the gorge. Had he seen its like on Earth, he would have guessed that it dated from Roman times. Here it might be more recent, but no traveler had crossed Susswater at this point for several centuries.

  The ancient road it had served was still evident, leading southward through a curiously diffuse settlement, a hodgepodge of farmland, trees, ruins, and cottages. No one else was about yet, so he was free to chat with Eleal. He soon established that this was Ruatvil. He learned how the language distinguished between small, medium, and large places—villages like Notby, towns like Ruatvil, cities like Suss. He suspected that even a city would seem very small by his standards. London or Paris would fill the whole valley.

  “Hello, Ruat!” he said in English. “Mr. Goodfellow sends his love.”

  Eleal looked up quickly to frown at him. Her hat fell off and they laughed.

  He felt very strange, walking under a tropic sun again, disguised as a peasant, but he had been seven days in this new world now and was eager to see more of it.

  Beyond the remains of Ruatvil, he noticed real peasants toiling in the fields under coolie hats like his. People could pass through the portals, animals could not. The concept of agriculture could; the domesticated species would have to be local. He saw beasts of burden and herds of others that might be edible. They had a rough similarity to oxen and goats, and he thought he recognized geese until he observed that they had fur instead of feathers. The vegetation was unfamiliar, but none of it would have seemed out of place in a terrestrial land he had not visited before.

  The biggest surprise of the morning was a man racing past on the back of something shaped like an ostrich. It was gone before Edward had time to see it properly. Soon two more riders approached from the south, and then he had time to observe that their mounts had hair and hooves. They moved very fast. Eleal told him they were mothaa, so he classified them in his mind as moas, although they must be more mammal than bird. He was trying hard to think in the local language, but he had not succeeded yet.

  The road now was merely a red dirt trail, rutted and pocked with weeds. Hedges defined the fields and he saw no barbed wire, no eyeglasses or steam engines. He no longer believed in Creighton’s gun—he had another theory now to explain the reaper’s death—but he still hoped that the culture of Ruatvil did not represent the limits of Nextdoor’s technology. An interplanetary traveler arriving at some isolated Chinese or African village would not find motorcars or telegraph wires.

  No policeman asked to see the travelers’ papers, no highwayman demanded their money or their lives. By and large the population just ignored them—field workers, herders, men driving oxcarts. The only exceptions were a few pedestrians coming along the trail in the opposite direction. They mostly regarded the holy man with surprise or disapproval, and in some cases with open amusement. Edward tried giving his sign of blessing, but that met with outright laughter and ribald comments. Thereafter he maintained a dignified impassivity, but obviously an eighteen-year-old prophet was no more convincing on Nextdoor than he would have been on Earth. He needed old Porith’s white beard.

  To his shame, he soon found himself hard put to keep up with the crippled child at his side. Eleal might have less than two complete legs, but she made good use of what she had. He wondered why she did not wear a built-up shoe to make her stride more even.

  The road continued to wander south. As their destination lay to the north, he concluded that the detour was going to be sizable, probably dictated by the availability of bridges. After five or six miles he had reached his limit. Happily, just there the road crossed a small knoll, capped by a grove of tall trees like gigantic umbrellas, casting black velvet shadow. Eleal pulled faces, but agreed to let him rest.

  An hour or so later, they set off again and soon came to a junction. Eleal turned to the east. A short distance on this new road brought them to a fast-flowing river, whose milky water told of its glacial origin, like streams Edward had seen in the Alps. He was staggering now, his legs trembling. He had a nagging toothache and blisters from the unfamiliar footwear.

  “Rest!” he said as he staggered down the incline to the ford. Such weakness was humiliating, but his illness had drained him of strength.

  Clutching her hat, Eleal looked up at him with a worried frown. “Not speak!”

  “Not speak,” he agreed. The last thing he needed now was the strain of trying to make conversation.

  She led the way over a long line of stepping stones, into a small grove on the far bank. Several groups of travelers were taking a noontime break in a wayside campground. Two oxcarts stood by the road; a few of the strange moa bipeds grazed on tethers under trees resembling beeches. Watchdogs that looked more like oversized shaggy cats guarded a herd of goatlike creatures. Flower-bedecked shrubs brightened the grove. Almost all the blossoms were some shade of red, and he had noted the same thing at Ruatvil. It reminded him of Kenya, where blue and yellow flowers were similarly rare. Delicious odors of cooking came wafting from the fires.

  Eleal pointed to a log near an unoccupied hearth, seeming to imply that Edward should sit on it, so he did. He thought he heard his knees utter sighs of relief. He felt like one big a
che. He had a sunburn, and he was trembling with fatigue.

  Was it all fatigue? He looked around uneasily at the pillared tree trunks. Something creepy…Then he realized that it was virtuality again. This campground was a node—not on the scale of the Ruat temple or Stonehenge, but awesome enough to make his skin prickle. He could see no shrine or ruins; he could only hope that it had no resident numen.

  Eleal had gone hobbling over to the largest group of wayfarers, eight or nine men busily eating and arguing. They broke off their conversation to inspect her. Then they scowled across at her pilgrim companion.

  Undeterred, she began to make a speech. Edward could not understand any of it. One of the men shouted angrily, waving her away. They were a nondescript gang, rough and weather-beaten. A couple of the youngest wore only loincloths, the rest were clad in the customary drab smocks, their straw hats lying on the grass beside them. Every man had a knife at his belt and they all sported beards. Most were stocky and dark-complexioned. Apart from their clothes, they could have been rural Italians.

  Eleal was never easily discouraged. She continued her harangue, gesturing dramatically in Edward’s direction—no doubt explaining how holy and worthy he was. He did not feel holy and worthy, but he did feel hungry, and unbearably weary. The throb in his tooth hurt almost as much as his feet.

  One of the younger men said something witty and all the others laughed. The oldest, a graybeard, shouted at her again. They were not speaking the language Eleal had been teaching Edward, and neither was she. It had a more guttural sound to it, but he caught a word or two and decided it might be only a dialect variation. She grew shriller and more insistent. Graybeard stood up and advanced on her menacingly. Evidently her plan to elicit charity for her pilgrim was not going to work. Nice try.

  Abandoning hopes of lunch, Edward rose also. He limped forward and laid a hand on Eleal’s shoulder. She jumped, and fell silent. He had intended to draw her away, but she did not move and that turned his gesture into one of protection and support. Suddenly there was confrontation. Graybeard was no longer threatening a child, but a man both younger and taller than himself. He could not possibly back down now.