by David Drake
It did seem that the two voices couldn’t know exactly what he was thinking unless a thought was so complete he was on the verge of speaking it out loud.
At least so he hoped.
Well, Raj, you can call me Abel, he said, and I don’t think we’re going to be friends. He hoped the tone of defiance was clear in his thought-speech.
From Raj’s quiet chuckle afterward, he figured it had been.
Abel turned his attention back to flying. He’d now reached the River. He’d approached from the east, and he leaned to his right to tilt the flyer into a north-northwest direction, parallel to the general trend upriver, although the water’s course itself wound back and forth in a completely crazy fashion.
The wind whipped by his ears and caused his hair, plaited by the nanny into a single pigtail, to stick out like a riding dont’s neck plumage. He leaned forward, and, to his delight, this increased the flyer’s speed.
You’ll notice that there are very few clouds to obscure your view of the Valley below, Center intoned.
Yeah, so?
Precisely, said Center. There are never many clouds. Due to the extreme height of the Schnee formation—we are still not level with the smallest peaks, even at this altitude—almost all westerly wind current is blocked on the eastern side of the massif. The prevailing winds on this side of the continent are strong northeasterlies, channeling up from the Braun Sea to the wastes above the River’s springs and, ultimately, flowing through the high passes and into Duisberg’s Arctic, where what moisture there is becomes locked up in snowfall and ultimately ice. The northern glaciers calve into the Braun, and the cycle continues, for this geological moment, at least.
Massif.
Continent.
Arctic.
Abel winced as each of the unfamiliar words seemed to twist and squirm inside him before they locked on to a set of meanings. Every moment of new knowledge acquisition was also a moment of pain. Center had not lied. It hurt. But in the end, he made sense, or believed he made sense, of what the voice was saying. He understood.
The River itself originates near Chambers Pass in the Schnees and is the sole drainage for the western continent. It flows south-southwest to the Braun Sea. Duisberg is extraordinarily dry as settlement planets go, and there is no comparable hydrological system anywhere else, not in either hemisphere. The terrain created by the River provides the only planetary region capable of feudal-style agriculture such as is practiced in the Land.
Your deserts and scrublands are herder territory, said Raj. Fit only for nomads. And the Redlands will only support scraggly grazing animals at that, given the present condition of development. That’s one of the reasons that raiding has become such a way of life for those…what do you call the tribes outside the Land?
“Redlanders,” said Abel. “Even talking to them can get you crucified.”
And yet talking goes on all the time, I’ll wager, answered Raj.
Correct, said Center.
“But if you touch a Redlander, you’ll get sick and die!” Abel exclaimed.
You never really believed that, did you, boy?
Raj was right. When Abel mentioned the Redlander curse to his father, his father had nodded, but he’d smiled in the same way he did when Abel asked him if it was true swimming in a temple pool made a baby grow in a mommy’s tummy.
“I guess not.”
In fact, the current aristocracy is made up of Redlander stock, said Center. Observe. The Land is merely two to three leagues across roughly east to west, but is over two hundred leagues long north to south. It would take the better part of a Duisberg year to walk its length from the Delta to the upper cataracts.
A strategic weakness, said Raj. Would be fatal if the scrub lands weren’t so poor. So it is in the interest of Zentrum to keep them poor or at least to keep them sedated. And he doesn’t care how he does it, either. When the Redlanders have built up to any extent, he doesn’t just allow them to invade. He practically invites them in.
Your people have myths of these nomadic invasions. They are called the Blood Winds.
“I know about that,” said Abel, again returning to the spoken word to expresses a more complicated thought. “Elder Newfeld taught us about it in Thursday school.”
The people of the Land had grown wicked and disobeyed the commandments of God, the elder had said. So Zentrum, God’s voice, allowed their enemies to attack and destroy every other man, woman, and child. Even the donts. That was the part Abel particularly hated.
Zentrum made an accommodation with the invading Redlander tribes. They were given lands, titles, wealth. They stayed, interbred—and were absorbed into the surviving populace. This has happened time and again.
It’s going to happen again, Abel, Raj said. Soon.
What’s going to happen?
Blood Winds. They’re coming.
Abel leaned back, slowed the flyer. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach. In the stories, the Redlanders hadn’t just killed the people of the Land. They’d spitted babies on the ends of their spears. They’d taken kids away to be slaves forever.
And worst of all, they tortured the riding donts before they slaughtered them. Cut off their hoofpads. Tied their mouths closed and plugged their blowholes so they couldn’t breathe.
Abel loved riding donts, loved everything about them. It hurt him inside to hear a dont scream in pain. It really bothered him if that pain came from a whip lashing or the kick of a glassrock spur. If he hated one thing more than all else, it was people who were mean to donts.
“They’re going to kill the donts? All of them? They can’t do that!”
Maybe they can and maybe they can’t, Raj said, his tone softer. That’s part of why we’re here, Center and me.
You can stop it? But you said God wants them to win, to—
Raj cut him off. Zentrum. Again, lad, Zentrum is not God. God doesn’t care who wins or loses a fight. Well, let’s just say God’s thinking on such matters is a bit hard to figure. Zentrum, on the other hand, has a very simple plan. Keep things the way they’ve always been. Forever. Maintain stasis.
He has achieved this aim on Duisberg for nearly three thousand years by restricting the population to this peculiar blend of Neolithic and early industrial-age technology.
Abel pictured the Land, the rolling fields of barley and flax he’d passed on the way from Lindron to Hestinga. The flitterdonts and the hardbacks and especially Mot, the little riding dont that was his special mount.
“What’s wrong with Stasis? That’s what all the Laws and Edicts are supposed to be for.”
Can’t last, Raj said. And there’s no fallback.
Zentrum has made a fundamental miscalculation that will destine this planet to ruin, said Center. It was based on insufficient information. After all, when the Collapse came, the slide was rapid due to nannite viral infection of electronica via the Tanachi Net. A secured military or planetary defense computer of some sort, a being such as myself in original configuration, is often the only electronic suite that survived intact. My kind can be an extremely protective, even paranoid, lot.
Creativity, innovation, people having a say in their own governance, said Raj. Zentrum hates all that.
The words and their meanings again exploded in Abel’s mind. He closed his eyes against the strain, but it didn’t seem to help. This was not a headache. It was more like a mind ache.
And within all the words, one shining, horrible, wondrous, amazing fact stood out.
What the voice said was true.
Zentrum was not God. Not even the voice of God.
Zentrum was a mean Thursday school teacher who wanted you to sit up straight and recite the Law for watch after watch. Who never let you do anything that wasn’t Edict. Who whacked you with the correction stick when you got out of Stasis for even one second.
In the Land, it’s Thursday forever, lad, said Raj.
When Abel opened his eyes again, he was hovering over the Fourth Cataract near the River’s he
adwaters as it cascaded out of the Schnee.
A village stretched below him. Its rooftops not flat, as were all roofs Abel had ever seen so far. These were oddly tilted and joined at the center in ridges.
They’re for shedding the autumn rains, lad, Raj said with a chuckle. Never seen the like, have you? Not only that, sometimes in midwinter they’re topped with snow.
White, like in the stories?
Yes, lad. At least for a day. Then the dust settles in and browns it down.
Behold Orash, Progar District, said Center. Behold the gateway of the Blood Wind.
2
Observe:
The Redlanders flooded down the Escarpment toward the forts at the choke point of the River. The donts they rode upon were Valley stock sold to them by the very villagers they were now attacking. It didn’t matter. The Redlanders cut through the villagers like a scythe.
Time to go down, said Raj, and abruptly Abel found himself off the flyer and standing in a village street.
The principle street of Orash in a not-distant future. Observe:
Screaming people were running past him. Babies were crying. Children were yelling for their parents, for their brothers and sisters.
Nobody knew where to go or what to do.
Because there wasn’t anywhere to go.
The rumble of massed riding donts in the distance. Men on dontback. Abel recognized the sound well enough without Center’s data planting.
Screams that were screams of pain.
A single villager charging down the street straight at Abel, a wild look on his face and insanity in his eyes.
It was the eyes that frightened Abel the most.
He’s seen something, Abel thought to himself. Something horrible.
Their eyes locked, and the man headed directly toward Abel at a quick pace, as if tugged by a lanyard.
Abel flinched. The man with the crazy eyes was going to run right over him. There was no time to dodge, no time to jump away.
But then the man stumbled. Slowed.
Still his eyes remained locked with Abel’s.
And then he keeled over and fell on his face at Abel’s feet.
The man’s back was pierced with arrows as if he were a human pincushion. And there was a gunshot to the left shoulder blade. Meat and muscle hung loose, and the ball had wreaked terrible damage to the bone.
It looks like a ragged, bloody cave, Abel thought. Bone glinted within torn skin.
Enough, said Raj.
Abel was back in the storehouse in Hestinga. He stumbled back from the upended flyer he’d been touching. He gasped for air.
“That man—” Abel managed to wheeze.
—one of many, said Raj. Many thousands who will die.
The Redlanders will sweep down Valley. The Second Cataract forts were designed as bases for forays into the surrounding desert, not north-south defense bastions. Their rear works are practically nonexistent. Most of them are unwalled and back up to the River. The Central Granary on Montag Island will burn. Rotten Bruneberg will crumble. Lindron will fall. The priesthood will flee to Mims. Mims will burn along with the priests. Thousands more will die from famine.
How do you know? Abel asked.
I am a fifth-generation artificial intelligence running on a one hundred gigacubit quantum superimposition engine. I complete more calculations per one of your eyeblinks than all the computers of the first millennium of the Information Age could produce together if all of them ran at full power for each of those one thousand years.
Huh?
Trust me, Abel. I know.
Zentrum will reach an accommodation with the Redlanders, said Raj. As always, Zentrum believes he is taking the long view.
There is a tactical purity to the scheme, said Center. If one’s time horizon does not extend beyond a century or two.
Bloody hell, you sound like you agree with him! Raj practically shouted in Abel’s still spinning mind. Have we not seen this before? Have we not seen where it leads?
Merely tactical, not strategic, Center replied without missing a beat. There is an enormous error at the heart of Zentrum’s calculations. Stasis is error.
Abel pulled himself upright. He started to back away, to back out of the room, but something stopped him. He had another question. More to learn. Even after all this, after seeing the crazy-eyed man and his ripped apart back, Abel still felt—
Curious.
“H-how?” he said aloud.
How what? said Raj brusquely.
Abel experimented with keeping his thoughts to himself.
Ask. Ask the question. Just because you want to know. Maybe they had heard. Were these his own thoughts, or Center’s, somehow beaten into his mind?
No. No, they weren’t.
Mamma liked it when I was curious. Mamma liked it that I wanted to know everything.
“How is Stasis wrong?” Abel asked.
For many reasons. On a mere physical level, consider: Duisberg has three moons. The gravitational tides created by their interactions have created an enormous debris field in a nearby orbit. The very rotation of the planet, opposite that of the rotational momentum of the system as a whole, speaks to this fact, as well. There have been cataclysmic strikes in the past, and a future meteor strike is a virtual certainty, geologically speaking.
Each unfamiliar word lit up with a definition as Center spoke it. Didn’t help. This was the way all adults were, explaining things that had no earthly use right now.
So what?
I don’t understand your response.
I said, so what?
Rephrase, please.
Am I going to get hit by a giant rock from space?
Unlikely that you yourself will be hit.
Is my father?
Again, unlikely.
You’re stupid, then. And I don’t care.
Human cognitive integration error. Due to your limited experience, you will require time to process.
Raj laughed heartily. It was not a pleasant laugh, either.
There’s no error. He may be six, but he gets it well enough, don’t you, lad? Your mother—there’s the key. Was she not going to always be there for you? Where is she, Abel?
Mamma.
Not fair.
It was one thing to fight, even to get beaten up. He was tough, and, even if he cried, he knew he didn’t really care. But to have a presence in your head that knew the places that really hurt—that wasn’t shy about touching those places if it served a purpose…
Mamma. Sunken eyes. Gurgling breath that smelled like pus. Face twisted in pain at something inside that was eating her, killing her.
That did kill her.
It had only been a toothache.
Only a stupid toothache the week before. And then she left me.
Lad, I’m sorry.
“Not fair,” he whispered. “It was just a bad tooth. She had it out. That was supposed to cure her.”
Bacterial sepsis, no doubt.
I know it’s not fair, lad. It’s not. But there’s your answer. Nothing stays the same.
Zentrum has fallen into a logical trap of his own creation.
“Not. Fair.”
Something heavy in his hands. Abel glanced down. It was the rock, the door stop. He was still clutching it. He’d been clutching it all along.
See there in the corner? See the cone-shaped thing?
Abel looked around. He had to step past the upturned flyer to see what Raj was talking about. It was indeed a cone shape, white with black markings upon it, as if it had survived a terrible fire.
“I see it,” Abel said. “What is it?”
Another laugh, this one not so unsettling.
Why, it’s the spaceship we came in, lad, Center and me.
And Abel understood—because he was made to understand. The capsule speeding through hyperspace in a tunnel of stars, their light extended into lines about the spaceship. This capsule. Hundreds of others on their way to different worlds, other fallen hu
man worlds.
Like puffer-rod seeds, when you blew them, flying every which direction.
“I don’t get it,” Abel said. “I mean, I know what a spaceship is, you just showed me. But why? Why’d you come here?”
Change, replied Center. Change will occur, and if all upward change is blocked, what eventually occurs will be downward. Another Collapse. And this one longer and more complete than any other. Maybe final. This world must be readied to rejoin the awakened Republic. Those ships will come. And when they do, if they find nothing but primitives crawling among the ruins, they will pass by. There is much else to do.
“So what?”
Things can get worse, Raj said. Like they got worse for your mother.
“Leave my mother alone!”
If this society had the most basic antibiotics, your mother would still be alive, said Center. We could have helped her.
“You’re gods from the heavens! If you want to help me, bring her back!”
We can’t do that, Abel. We’re not gods.
“But you are. I know what you say, but you have to be to show me all this. I’ll do whatever you say. Whatever it is you want.” Tears were streaming down Abel’s face. “Just bring Mamma back.”
You don’t understand, Abel Dashian, Center calmly replied. It is we who need you.
He gripped the rock tighter. “Then what good are you?” With all his might, Abel raised the rock over his head. He stepped toward the capsule. “Get out.”
You can’t harm the capsule, said Center. Not with a simple stone, Abel.
“Get out of me.”
A moment of silence. Then Raj’s deep voice, now tight with concern. His plan isn’t to hurt the capsule, Raj said. Abel, lad—
“You don’t scare me,” said Abel. Despite himself, he found himself laughing through his tears. “You don’t scare me, I’m the Carnadon Man.”
Then Abel brought the stone down hard upon his own head and fell into darkness.
3
When Abel awoke, he was looking at his reflection in still water. His head ached.
Not still water. Probably blood, he thought. My blood. I’m seeing my reflection in my own blood. Must be a lot of it.
He reached for the blood to see if it was still warm. Maybe this was what it was like to be dead.