The Moon and the Face

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  His thoughts strayed to Kyreol; he wished he could have the Healer’s dreams. Even more he wished she were here, safe and happy, sitting on the bank with him, counting shooting stars and telling of her adventures. His throat ached suddenly. Before he could see her again, there must be a death. He wished Regny were back.

  He turned away from the River, went back into the house. The Healer’s eyes went to his face as he entered. He looked very tired, in pain again, but his eyes were peaceful. He gestured weakly; Terje knelt in the furs at his side.

  “Terje… I had a dream.”

  “About Kyreol?” he asked hopefully.

  “No. It was about you. You held the great River in one hand and the Moon-Flash in your other hand…” He paused, swallowing. Korre’s mother was still; even the twigs on the fire were still. Terje felt his neck hair prickle. He wanted to draw back from the Healer, but the deep black gaze bound him motionless. “It was a good dream,” the Healer said tranquilly. “One I have been waiting for. It was the dream of a new Healer. The River has chosen you.”

  8

  THE WHITE CITY revolved into night. Kyreol, curled up in the raincoat on the dusty floor, listened to the alien humming its young to sleep. The humming was deep, bass, meandering softly from note to note. In the dark, it was a soothing sound, like the voice of a river…

  She woke abruptly, sweating in hot light. Images from a dream tumbled away from her; she caught at them: the first dream she had remembered in a long time, clear and bright with color. Terje. Terje with his hair blazing like sunlight. He had picked up the River in one hand, like a wide blue ribbon. On his forehead was the Moon-Flash. In his other hand was…what? Kyreol sat up, not seeing anything, intent on the scattering impressions. What was in his other hand? She remembered then, and frowned, puzzled, but the dream had spoken.

  A stone face. He held one of the great, gaunt black stone faces they had passed on their journey down-river.

  She swallowed, feeling her heartbeat. The blank eyes gazed at her from Terje’s head, sightless yet seeing…

  “Terje?” she said tremulously to the air. Tears gathered in her eyes, fell, for as vast as the night was between them Terje had reached across it to tell her something, and the stone face was the message.

  Death, a tiny voice in her mind said. She made a sound, wiping at her face, and an echo of the sound came at her from across the room.

  She jumped, remembering the alien. It was peering at her out of all three eyes. Its young were awake, roaming around its shoulders; Kyreol could hear their high, rambling melodies. The alien brushed at the fur on its face and made the sound again. Kyreol stared at it uncomprehendingly. Then she said, “Oh.” Water was falling out of her eyes. “Tears,” she said. “Tears. I had a dream. It made me sad.” She brushed away the last of them. Maybe, she thought hopefully, I was just remembering the dead from the spaceship…

  Joss Tappan.

  She leaned back against the wall, pulling her thoughts together.

  I have to find out what happened to Joss.

  I have to contact the Dome.

  I have to…

  The alien was rising.

  It seemed even more formidable than Kyreol remembered, huge and brilliant with color. Its eyes were a deep purple; it was unafraid at the moment. It walked to the center of the room; its beak clicked at Kyreol. Kyreol stood up after a moment and bundled the raincoat back into her pack. There wasn’t much to be done sitting in a dust-covered room. She slung her pack over her shoulder. The alien had turned and was already at the bubble-door.

  When it walked fast, Kyreol had to jog to keep up with it. But its progress generally was by fits and starts. It was, she realized, a shy and fearful explorer. It shied at shadows; it stood worrying at closed doors. Its eyes turned pale at puffs of dust blown up unexpectedly by the wind. It hummed nervously when it crossed rooms full of bulky, inanimate objects of uncertain purpose. But it seemed to move with its own sense of purpose, hesitant and nervous as its passage was. Kyreol followed hopefully. Maybe its ship is near, she thought. Maybe they’ll let me signal the Dome. If I can explain… It made noises as it moved, hissing like a pot boiling, clicking, breaking into song, then muttering like some forest animal that had just leaped at its supper and missed. Kyreol, listening, felt a giddiness well up in her. She held it as long as she could, but a series of odd sounds strung together—parrots squawking, a blast like a boat horn, more mutterings, followed by a yelp as a little ghost of dust whispered across its path—made her stop suddenly, lean against a wall, crying and trembling helplessly with laughter.

  The alien’s shadow fell over her. It came so close she could smell it: a faint, sharp odor, like charred wood. She tried to quiet herself, hiccupping, half-alarmed. When she glanced up; all three eyes had turned green.

  She sank down in the passageway, whimpering again, half with laughter, half with fear. The green eyes gazed at her; the alien was oddly quiet. What did the green mean? Was it angry? She covered her face with her hands, trying to escape from everything at once: the alien, the lifeless city, the dead spaceship, the unknown moon, the dream of death.

  Terje, she whispered, deep inside her.

  She smelled the alien again. It had settled beside her. She could hear, faint as breathing, the high, sweet voices of its young.

  She lifted her head slowly. The alien was holding something in front of her: a small white and purple furball with a soft beak. Its tiny eyes were closed. It sang as it nuzzled between the three rough fingers, nibbling at them delicately. The alien’s eyes, watching it, were still green.

  Kyreol sat still. She didn’t dare touch the youngling, though its fur looked soft as forest moss, and it might have sung in her hands. It was a soothing thing to look at. Even the alien was calmed by it; the noises it made were gentle and melodious. It put the youngling back finally onto its shoulder, where it nestled into deep fur. Slowly the color of its eyes changed back to purple.

  Green, Kyreol decided finally, was its maternal color. The mother worrying over an alien afflicted by a sudden, acute attack of bizarre or distressed behavior. The mother shutting out the world, playing with her young.

  But was it female? Kyreol, eyeing it as it searched through the instruments at its kneebands, recognized no evidence one way or another. Maybe, she thought, it’s babysitting.

  It found what it wanted among its instruments: a slim silver square with a couple of lights on it. It touched one of the lights and Kyreol, recognizing it, held her breath. It was a communicator. The alien clicked at it, listened. It touched the light again and again. But the only answer was the sigh and rattle of wind through the city.

  The alien gave up finally, making a noise like a broken spring. It held the instrument out to Kyreol, and she remembered the com-crystal in her pack. She rummaged for it. It flashed in her hand, gathering light like a star; the alien muttered nervously. Then it reached out, touched the hard, clear crystal curiously. Kyreol opened it, and the alien murmured again at the filigree of gold and crystal within.

  “Joss,” Kyreol said to the dead world beyond the city. “Joss Tappan. It’s me, Kyreol. Are you alive? Joss?”

  She didn’t know how long she spoke. A rough, three-fingered hand closed around her hand and the com-crystal, stopping her. She sat in silence, her throat raw, the tears aching around her eyes. She didn’t want to look at what sat beside her. It didn’t know her world, it couldn’t speak her name. A youngling hummed in her ear. The alien itself was so still it drew Kyreol’s eyes finally. She turned her head slowly, reluctantly, found all its eyes closed. It sat limply, not even fondling its young.

  Kyreol stared. It’s lost too, she thought. Just like me. Its ship doesn’t answer; no one answers me. I wonder—I wonder—

  “Is that what happened?” she breathed. “Did we hit each other—your ship and mine?”

  One eye opened at her voice. It was very pale, almost white. A small sound came finally in response. The other eyes opened. And gradually color r
eturned. The creature gave a very human sigh and got to its feet again.

  Kyreol trailed it through a maze of corridors, open walkways, empty rooms, which might have been warehouses or meeting chambers or even marketplaces. There was no one to say what they had been. They kept to the uppermost level of the city, sometimes walking in wind and light, sometimes within the endless, colorless stones. Maybe it’s looking for a door out, Kyreol thought puzzledly, sweating to keep up with its long, erratic strides. Then the alien, stepping through a door, stopped so suddenly she bumped into it and felt, for the first time, the softness of its fur.

  She stepped aside, peering around it, and saw a vast, circular chamber with a clear domed roof. Its two sections were almost completely drawn open to the sky. In the center of the huge room, like a squat glittering insect with a broken wing, sat a very dusty shuttle.

  The alien and Kyreol made the same noise. The alien moved cautiously, peering all around. Kyreol ran toward the shuttle, coughing at the dust she kicked up. Its broken wing was a ramp that had never been pulled away. Kyreol went up. The shuttle’s wide, round door was open. Its instrument panel was buried under dust.

  Kyreol brushed at it, more out of curiosity than hope. How many years had it sat there in the deserted city? Where had everyone gone, leaving the last, unnecessary shuttle? They had flown away; no one had stayed to close the dock roof. Why? She gazed out the roof, at the sky, so full of light and dust it was almost as pale as the moon. “Where did they go?” she wondered, seized with longing to know the story behind the dead city. How many people had been there? Had they had children, cooking pots, carpets, pets, teapots, chairs—had they moved everything? Or was it all still there, beneath them, in a different level of the city? Were there deserted rooms with beds and clothes and little treasures and good-luck charms still in them?

  She had a sudden, fleeting memory of Arin Thrase’s museum, with her mother’s feather betrothal skirt hanging within a glass case.

  She drew her eyes back to the instrument panel. The dust poured into her lap, around her feet. Even if she unburied it, it would never fly; its mechanisms were probably clogged. And what had they used for fuel? She scraped clear a circular instrument face, with a desultory movement. Radar? Fuel gauge? A radio? It could have been anything, for all the colored lines across the circle made any sense—

  She blinked, hunching over it. Blue. Yellow. Lavender. Pink. Orange. Purple. Brown.

  Colors. The first colors she had seen in the entire city.

  She stared at the minute patterns of colored lines until they swarmed together under her nose. Then she sat back in the long ample chair realizing she couldn’t possibly imagine any kind of people who used color only in tiny symbols on the instrument panels of their ships.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she murmured. “Unless they just don’t care for colors. They just use them for markers.”

  Then she looked toward the alien.

  It stood with its back to her, doing some dusting of its own along a shelf at the far side of the room. Kyreol squinted through the haze on the shuttle’s window. “Kyreol, you turtle-brain—” she said aloud. Instead of rushing to a shuttle craft that was choked with dust and full of mysteries, the alien had found other things a landing dock might hold. Flight screens to watch incoming vessels. Computer terminals. A communications system far stronger, if it still worked, than her com-crystal.

  She swung out of the shuttle, down the ramp. Sweat pricked at her hairline, brought on by both fear and hope. If it worked, if it was strong enough… They could put out a distress signal to the Dome ships. If the alien could make it work…the alien turned as she neared it. Its eyes were almost black with excitement; its beak clicked so fast she wondered how anyone could possibly keep track of such a language. She helped it dust, and saw, with a deep surge of hope, that the controls were all encased in clear protective covers.

  They worked down the length of the long, curved shelf, dusting, removing covers, removing the fine, fine blanket of dust that had crept even beneath the tightly fitting covers. And all along the control shelf, Kyreol saw again and again the tiny patterns of colored lines.

  The number of lines and their positions changed constantly; there might be two lines paralleling, or as many as ten radiating outward from a point. The colors seemed to vary as arbitrarily. The colors themselves were amazingly diverse.

  Did they go look at a forest, Kyreol wondered, to know all those shades of green? Or did they just invent them, the way we invented—

  Numbers. Letters. That’s what she was looking at. Instructions, code letters, words as simple as “on” and “off,” in an alphabet of color.

  She made a sound of wonder and despair, staring at the huge panel. It would take a hundred years to translate color into language—especially when the language itself was of another world. But the alien didn’t seem dismayed. It was humming gently, surveying the board, its eyes still the deep, lustrous purple-black. It understands these things, Kyreol thought. Its people don’t fly between planets, they fly between stars. They must have met other aliens, recognized many kinds of languages .…

  The alien stretched a finger toward the panel, moved a switch.

  A thousand lights blazed along the panel, halfway up the wall. Kyreol caught her breath and shouted, “You made it work!”

  The alien yipped, startled. Its children sang.

  9

  TERJE SAT on a rock in the dark, watching moonlight shiver into fragments across the water. It was very late; the Healer had been asleep for hours. The moon was beginning to set behind the Face. Regny hadn’t returned from the Outstation yet. If he didn’t come soon, Terje thought, the moon would disappear and they would miss each other in the dark.

  The moon. His eyes were dragged to it. Its light seemed to melt against the black line of cliff as it sank, turning the Falls a milky white. He saw the Moon-Flash in his mind, the lick of fire that had awed him as a child. It made the Healer’s dream seem even more perplexing.

  “How?” he wondered aloud to the murmuring River, “can I chant to a supply ship?”

  He stirred restlessly, wishing Regny would come. Regny would expect him to be asleep; he wasn’t sleepy. He was wide awake, his veins full of night, his brain running like a squirrel with unanswered questions. Kyreol. The Healer’s dream. What he, Terje, was going to do. Dreams. Were they sometimes more hope than truth? How much longer would the Healer live? How much did Nara know of what had happened to Kyreol? Where was Regny?

  He picked a broken seedpod out of a crevice in the rock and plopped it in the water. A hand came down on his shoulder.

  His skin jumped. “Regny—”

  “I am so tired,” Regny said. “I wish I could turn into something else.” His voice sounded heavy, ragged, though his breathing was steady. “What are you doing awake? Is the Healer—Did he—”

  “He’s sleeping,” Terje said. The last glowing bit of moon sank; Regny’s face became little more than a solid patch of darkness. He tried to see it anyway. “Did you talk to Nara?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what?” Terje said, numbed by his silence. “What did she say?”

  “The ship to Xtal never made it. But—” He was gripping Terje’s wrist, talking quickly, and Terje realized slowly that he himself had moved, had spoken. He was halfway down the rock. “Whatever happened, happened fast, but they managed to send a distress signal just before they vanished. I told Nara about the Healer’s dreams of Kyreol. She cried. She said if the Healer dreamed Kyreol was alive, she is alive. She said perhaps the ship crashed on one of Niade’s moons; the signal was so brief no one could tell for sure, but they were in that area. The Dome had been thinking the ship might have destructed in flight, or fallen toward Niade and burned itself up in the atmosphere. Even so, they sent out a couple of search and rescue ships, but they weren’t sure where to look. Now they’ve got something to go on—” He had let go of Terje’s wrist; his hand was between Terje’s shoulders. It was
a long time before Terje could speak. The River blurred and blurred again under his eyes; his fingers were trying to knead implacable stone.

  “She’s all right,” Regny said gently. “She must be. The Healer said so.”

  “Dreams.”

  “His dreams are true. You know that. Even I know.” He paused as if wondering why Terje took no comfort in that. “He was the one who knew she was in trouble in the first place.”

  “Regny—”

  “She had a bad feeling about the trip—they both did, I think, Nara and Kyreol, but—”

  “She said she would see me again. She said that.” He slid off the rock, sat on the bank with his back against it, his head tilted back, his eyes closed. He wiped at his face with the back of his hand, then heard the River’s voice again, the River of dreams, the River of the dead. They would have to give the Healer’s body to the River; the water would wrap itself around him, bear him on his final journey. His throat burned again.

  “Regny—”

  “Have you eaten anything? Do you want me to—”

  Terje opened his eyes. “Please,” he begged. “Please listen to me.”