Paragaea

by Chris Roberson

  “I did not say that.” Benu glanced back over his shoulder, his opalescent eyes glittering in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Leena was still disconcerted that he chose to walk unclothed and unadorned, as naked as he had been when lying on the slab in the ruined temple. Benu had explained that he had no need of clothes, but that if it bothered her to see him in such a state, he would endeavor to procure suitable clothing at the first opportunity. He explained that he usually adopted the fashions and customs of the culture in which he happened to find himself, but that when he traveled through the unpeopled wilds, he rarely maintained such affectations. “I said that no Sakrian cultures held the answers. Some, though, are aware of the questions, which might serve us as clues.”

  “What do you mean?” Leena asked.

  “In the city of Hausr, there is the sect of Kasparites, for example.”

  “I know of them,” Hieronymus said. “Their missionaries infest the other Sakrian cities like weevils, spreading the good word of their savior. What of them?”

  “They cleave to a most peculiar doctrine,” the artificial man went on, not turning around, but raising the volume of his voice that they might hear over the snapping and tearing of the undergrowth in his wake. “The central figure in their religion is a boy named Kaspar who dwelt in Hausr some centuries ago. This otherwise unremarkable young man is said to have disappeared in a flash of light in full view of many witnesses. As so often happens with matters difficult to explain, in time complex exegeses and cosmologies built up around this singular incident, like the layers of a pearl slowly accreting around an irritant, and in time matured into a full-blown belief system. Kaspar was eventually looked upon as a kind of holy vessel, one which walked among men for a time before being taken up into communion with the godhead. In light of your questions, Leena Chirikova, I can't escape the conclusion that this Kaspar at the heart of the mystery was the victim of another similar aperture between worlds, though this one translating him away from Paragaea rather than into this world from elsewhere.”

  Leena, for her part, could not escape the conclusion that Benu liked to lecture almost as much as Hieronymus did, if not more. Perhaps it was the long centuries spent gathering data that he was never able to deliver, an unimaginable store of knowledge packed into the gem that was the core of his personality.

  “Of course,” Benu went on, his lecture continuing, “the obverse is also true, and there are religions and creeds found on Paragaea which arguably have their origins in incidents of travelers from other worlds arriving unexpected in this world. The Pakunari of Ogansa Valley, as a perfect example, are a separate species of humanity who worship sibling deities, Wira and Ahari, whom myth contends came to the cradle of Pakunari civilization from another world at the beginning of time. While the doctrine does not record the specifics of their arrival, the broad strokes would certainly indicate a resemblance to your own story.”

  “Your examples serve to illustrate that it is possible to move from one world to the other,” Hieronymus called from the rear of the train, sounding out of breath and somewhat frustrated. “But this is a point which all present have already accepted as fact. What we require is the ability to predict where such points of transfer can be found, and to know where and when the resulting gates will lead.”

  “Fair enough,” Benu said, raising his hand and glancing back over his shoulder, something like a contrite expression written on his unmarred features. “Centuries ago, I once passed a few long days amongst the hive mind of Croatoan island in the company of a wayfarer who had visited the oracular forest of Keir-Leystall.”

  “And survived to tell the tale?” Balam's voice dropped to a whisper.

  “So he reported,” Benu answered.

  “What is this forest?” Leena asked.

  “A grove of talking trees of metal,” Hieronymus said, disbelieving, “who are said to know unplumbed secrets no other being can know. But I had always thought Keir-Leystall to be nothing more than a myth, a traveler's tale for the fireside.”

  “No,” Benu said absently, “it is quite real. I have visited there myself, from time to time, though I can't recommend the experience. In any event, this wayfarer claimed to have exchanged secrets with the oracular trees, and that one of the provinces over which the trees claimed mastery was the knowledge of moving between the worlds. Given that the trees are quite mad, I'm not sure how well to credit their testimony, but based on the available data, my contention is that if the answers to Leena's questions are held anywhere on the face of Paragaea, it would be there.”

  “So it's settled,” Leena said. She could not escape feeling a glimmer of hope, serving somewhat to balance her earlier despair. “So how far a journey is it to this…Keir-Leystall.”

  “Far,” Benu said simply. “Very far.”

  That night, around a crackling fire in a small clearing, strange hoots and calls ringing back forth from the copses of trees around them, the company consulted Hieronymus's maps. Benu allowed that they were fairly accurate, giving the current configurations of landmass and terrain on the Paragaean continent, though there were some irregularities to the placement of some of the townships and cities in the northwest reaches of Taured, and that to the best of his recollection the citadel city of Atla, atop Mount Ignis, was farther to the north and east than Hieronymus had placed it, nearer the edge of the burned steppes of Eschar.

  “I will want to discuss this further,” Hieronymus said, a gleam in his eyes, reluctant to change the topic of conversation away from matters cartographical. “But for the moment, I'm more concerned with the exact positioning of the fabled oracular forest of Keir-Leystall.”

  Benu leaned forward, and with a smooth-tipped, nailless finger pointed at the peninsula of Parousia, which dominated the eastern shore of the Inner Sea.

  “There, several days inland from the southern inlet of Parousia, beyond the mangrove swamps.”

  Balam growled, shaking his head discontentedly.

  “And we are where?” Leena asked, scanning the map for recognizable terrain.

  “Here,” Hieronymus said. He pointed to the forests that ran north and south between the high plains of Sakria in the east and the Rim Mountains in the west. Nearly half of the breadth of the continent separated their position from the location Benu had indicated.

  Leena rubbed her feet, for the moment mercifully free of her heavy boots, and sighed a ragged sigh.

  Days passed—bone-wearing days of traveling through the undergrowth, Benu ever driving them onwards farther and faster, seeming never to tire.

  It seemed to Leena as though they would never leave the woods behind, and every clearing they passed was just a momentary tease, a tantalizing hint of clear skies and open spaces, before the next stand of trees plunged them once again into the forest deeps. So it was that, stepping through a break in the tree line and walking into the broad sunshine, it took her a few blinking moments to realize what it was she saw. The tree line behind her continued in an unbroken line to the left and right, a forested wall running from the northwest to the southeast, but the broad, open plains before her continued as far as the eye could see, dotted here and there with little copses of trees that were completely dominated by the high plains around them.

  They stood at the edge of the Sakrian plains, the darkened forests of Altrusia behind them.

  “There,” Leena said, pointing ahead. “What's that?” Smoke curled on the far horizon, rising above a gray smudge that seemed to darken the landscape from the far north to the far south. “A city?”

  “With no buildings rising above the horizon?” Balam said, shaking his head. “Not likely.”

  “It is a city, of a sort,” Benu, whose opalescent eyes could see farther and more keenly than any of theirs, said. “But there are no buildings.”

  Leena was confused, but Hieronymus and Balam seemed immediately to take his meaning.

  “It's a city such as you've never seen, little sister,” Hieronymus said, smiling somewhat wistfull
y. “One which picks up stakes and moves with each turn of the season, migrating from one corner of the globe to another.”

  “The Roaming Empire,” Balam said, licking his black lips, and Leena fancied she could hear his stomach rumbling. “And while their cuisine is hardly without parallel, it would no doubt far overshadow the meager fire-roasted offerings of this damnable forest.”

  “More to the point,” Hieronymus said, “they traffic in knowledge, so mayhap we can find someone willing to trade a secret or two for transportation.”

  “It seems our most likely course.” Benu nodded. “And with my stores of knowledge full to the brim, with my long years of wandering, I'll have ample coin with which to barter.”

  “It is decided, then,” Balam said, heading out across the grassy plains towards the horizon. “We make for Roam.”

  It took them most of a day to cross the grasslands, during which time Leena insisted that Benu be outfitted with clothing. Their choices were few, and in the end Benu was forced to make do with one of Leena's shirts and Hieronymus's spare set of trousers, cinched at the waist with a belt from Balam's harnesses. Benu assured all involved that he would procure his own supplies once they reached the city, and return their articles undamaged. As ungainly as his costuming was, though, Leena preferred it to the sight of his hairless, sexless nudity.

  Leena was curious about their destination, this place called Roam, but neither Balam nor Hieronymus could offer much insight. Each had been visitors in the city, at least once, but while they could wax nostalgic about food tents or tavern wagons they had visited, and could make broad guesses about the economic and social forces that had created such a strange nomadic civilization, they could not address with certainty any of her precise questions. Benu, however, with his encyclopedic knowledge ready at hand, was only too eager to synthesize the facts at his disposal to provide the answers she sought, though their exchange was perhaps more soliloquy than colloquy, her first question—“What is Roam?”—enough to solicit an hour's worth of responses.

  “Roam,” Benu began, “or the Travelers' Nation, is more properly known as Forjus Vardo, or ‘Wagon City' in Roamish, though few know the name and fewer still choose to use it. Most simply call it Roam, and there is no reason why we shouldn't, as well. Roam is a nation always in motion, relocating in some years two or three times, and in other years with every turn of seasons. The laws of Roam dictate that only pure-blooded Roamish can enjoy the pleasures and burdens of citizenship; however, they have relaxed the requirements of what constitutes a Roamish over the generations, so that now anyone who is able-bodied and honest—honest enough, one supposes—can apply to the family of travelers.

  “When in motion, the caravan of Roam can be miles wide, and many dozens of miles long. When encamped, the wagons can spread out to cover a hundred square miles. In their numbers, the people of Roam are virtually invincible. They have no standing army or militia, no police beyond a loose collection of distant cousins and demibrothers that regulate interaction between familia and kumpania.

  “The arrival of Roam is invariably seen by the more permanent inhabitants of a region as the advent of the greatest circus imaginable, combined with the opening of the world's largest shopping emporium, leavened with the news that a nearby prison for the criminally insane has suddenly and without warning thrown wide its door, releasing all patients and prisoners. The people of the Sakrian plains have a saying: ‘When Roam is in view, take the good with the bad, and win what bargains you may.'”

  They reached the edge of Roam by sunset, which Hieronymus insisted was the best time to arrive at any circus or fair.

  It was everything Benu had said, and more. Innumerable wagons and caravans, arranged in haphazard patterns of streets or aisles, stretching as far as the eye could see. Lanterns swayed on strands overhead, and firelight danced from bonfires and cooking pits, suffusing everything with a warm, welcoming orange glow. Dogs and children were everywhere underfoot, and the lanes between lines of wagons were thronged with Roamish, the women in swirling skirts that reached to their ankles, their tops often covered with little more than knotted handkerchiefs, while the men wore blousy shirts bound up with broad leather belts over baggy trousers tucked into knee-high boots. And in amongst the Roamish were outsiders, some of them local farmers by their looks, others merchants or travelers from nearby Sakrian villages and townships, all of them with the same slightly bewildered look in their eyes that Leena knew she could not keep from her own expression.

  These makeshift lanes of arranged wagons were lined with vendors of every imaginable stripe, peddling everything from weapons, to comestibles, to spirits, to exotic fauna for use either as pets or meat. The vendors worked from the doorways of their own wagons, or from stalls or tents, or even from rugs spread out along the thoroughfare. Some accepted the coins of the nearby communities or the larger Sakrian city-states, some accepted barter or trade in kind, but many followed the traditions of Roam, and accepted only secrets and knowledge. The Roaming Empire was an information-based economy, and with the right hermetic wisdom in hand, anything was available for the asking.

  “We'll split up here,” Benu said when they came to the juncture between several aisles. “The Whisper Market, if this incarnation of Roam follows traditional patterns, will be found in that direction”—he pointed to the north—“and it is there that I am likely to get our best bargains. Here on the periphery the merchants trade primarily in local gossip and trade secrets, but in the Market itself can be found the serious information traders. I should be able to procure both clothing for myself, as well as suitable transportation to bear us further east. Is there anything else I should seek after?”

  “The knowledge of how to move between the worlds,” Leena said simply.

  Benu sighed wearily, a very natural-seeming gesture for an unnatural being, and shook his head slightly. “I will ask, but I have no confidence in a favorable response. You might busy yourself, in the interval before my return, by seeking the answer to that question yourself, which may serve if nothing else to help establish in your mind the rarity of the information you seek.” He turned to Hieronymus and Balam. “Would either of you care to accompany me? I can carry out my tasks without assistance, but should either of you find that you doubt my abilities to select suitable transport…” He fell silent, leaving the trailing sentence hanging in the air as a question.

  “No,” Balam said eagerly, long tongue playing about his fierce incisors. “I'm for the food tents, to see if I can't locate some clay-baked hedgehog.” He shivered slightly at the thought, eyelids closing in remembrance of past raptures. “Oh, or meat pudding!” he hastened to add. “Oh, gods, I'm hungry.”

  “Nor I,” Hieronymus said, stepping over to stand beside Leena. “As much as I trust Akilina to look after herself in adverse situations, my experience is that things in Roam are not always as they seem, and it is an unwise visitor who goes about unescorted, their first trip to the Roaming Empire.”

  “Likely a wise precaution,” Benu said. “Farewell for the moment, then. Meet me back at this juncture by sunrise, and we will see where we stand.”

  Without another word, the artificial man turned on his heel and headed towards the north, drawing stares as he went. Balam gave Hieronymus and Leena a little wave, and then turned to head off down the broadest aisle, following his nose to the nearest food tents.

  “Well, little sister,” Hieronymus said, laying an arm across her shoulder, “it looks like it's just you and me. What would you like to do first?”

  Leena looked around them, taking in the maddening crush of the mobile metropolis, the vendors and the peddlers, the tourists and locals ready to be fleeced. She gave a little shrug.

  “I think,” she said matter-of-factly, “that I could use a drink.”

  Hieronymus was able to locate a piav, a drinking tent, a few aisles to the west, and in short order he and Leena were sitting on either side of a rough-hewn wooden table, tankards of some sort of fortified w
ine in hand, their packs in the hard-packed dirt at their feet.

  “Cheers,” Hieronymus said, raising his tankard in a toast.

  “Za vawe zdorov’e,” Leena answered in Russian, clinking her tankard with his. To your health.

  The wine was both sour and cloyingly sweet on the tongue, but it warmed Leena from the inside out as it coursed down her throat, and she could feel her extremities tingle minutely as the spirits did their work.

  Leena let out a ragged sigh, and felt herself relax by centimeters, her shoulders slowly slumping, the tension in her neck slowly easing.

  “This is such an odd world,” she said, “this Paragaea of yours. So much of it familiar, so much of it strange. Men and beasts such as we knew on Earth, walking side by side with creatures from prehistory, and beings who might exist only in nightmares. How is it possible?”

  “That's a question that's puzzled me many a long night, little sister,” Hieronymus answered. “When I first arrived here, washed up like flotsam on the shores of Drift, I thought myself in a wholly alien land, where I would find nothing like what I had known on Earth. Over the years, though, learning what I have of the gates between the worlds, I've come to understand that countless others have fallen here from Earth. Not just men and women, but animals, plants, and machines. What I still fail to grasp, though, and what no sage of Paragaea has yet been able to answer, is why our two worlds are so connected. It is a mystery that still plagues my thoughts, in quiet hours.”

  “I wonder sometimes, Hero, if I'll ever return to Earth and discharge my duty.”

  “Why ever would you wonder that?” Hieronymus sipped his wine, looking genuinely confused.

  “Well, I suppose because it seems a very real possibility, if not even probability. These long weeks—months, I suppose I should say—that I have been traipsing around this strange world, and I've yet to come near a glimmer of hope that anyone knows the way between the worlds. Lots of hints and opinions, lots of myth and legend, but nothing concrete, nothing substantive. My duty as a cosmonaut and a loyal Soviet requires that I return and report what I have learned about this strange world, but I have begun to fear that that duty will go forever undischarged.”