Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset

by Cooper, Edmund

  ‘Who speaks of death?’ asked a high, reedy voice.

  There was silence.

  The god-king gave his piercing cry once more. ‘Who speaks of death?’

  Indrui Sa picked himself up. ‘Lord, the stranger brings chaos.’

  ‘But who speaks of death?’

  ‘Lord, chaos is the product of unbeing, therefore unbeing is the reward of chaos.’

  ‘Oruri hears you, Indrui Sa, most worthy of men and upholder of the law. Oruri hears you and is desirous of your company.’

  Indrui Sa stiffened and remained motionless.

  Poul Mer Lo was vaguely aware of others coming into the chamber.

  Enka Ne uttered his bird cry once more. ‘Strike!’ he said.

  A warrior stepped forward and thrust a short trident into the throat of Indrui Sa. There was a brief whistling noise, then he fell suddenly.

  ‘Release the instrument of chaos,’ commanded Enka Ne. Then, without waiting to see if his command was carried out, he turned and left the chamber.

  Presently, Poul Mer Lo found himself stumbling up a narrow spiral staircase, stumbling out into the brilliant and painful sunlight.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘It is very strange,’ said Shah Shan, speaking excellent English, ‘this friendship that exists between us. We are men of two worlds, Paul. It is strange that Oruri should guide you across the great darkness of space to shed some light in the darkness of my mind.’ He laughed. ‘One is tempted to look for a pattern.’

  ‘Shah Shan, you have a great talent for learning,’ said Paul Marlowe. ‘In two hundred days – four Bayani months – you have learned to speak my language better than many people in my own world who have studied it for years.’

  ‘That is because I wish to see into your thoughts.’

  ‘On Earth, we should undoubtedly call you a genius.’

  Shah Shan laughed. ‘I do not think so. From what you have told me, your planet has many who are more gifted than I.’

  ‘By our reckoning,’ said Paul, ‘you are nineteen years old – still a boy. Yet you rule a kingdom wisely, and you have assimilated more information in a few months than our most talented young men can assimilate in as many years.’

  Shah Shan shrugged. ‘Please, Paul, humour me a little. For me the old ways of thinking die hard. Enka Ne rules Baya Nor. Shah Shan is merely his shadow, a simple waterman.’

  Paul laughed. ‘Ritual schizophrenia.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I meant that in a sense you have two excellent minds, both able to perfectly control the same body.’

  ‘Oruri speaks for Enka Ne,’ retorted Shah Shan. Then he grinned. ‘But Shah Shan is insignificant enough to speak for himself.’

  ‘Paul,’ said Mylai Tui in English with an atrocious accent, ‘will you dronk some mare kappa spreet?’

  ‘Ask our guest first, love.’

  ‘I am sorry. Shah Shan, police you will dronk?’

  Shah Shan held out his calabash. ‘Police I will dronk,’ he said gravely.

  The three of them were taking their ease on the verandah of Paul’s little house. It had been a hot day, but though the evening was still warm, the clouded skies had rolled away to reveal a fine, far dusting of stars. Overhead the nine small moons of Altair Five flew raggedly westward like bright migrating birds.

  Paul Marlowe looked at the moons and the stars without seeing either. He was thinking of the last few months, of the time since Shah Shan had begun to come to him regularly to learn English. He knew that it was difficult for Enka Ne to make time for Shah Shan, and he had been puzzled as to why the boy should devote so much precious energy and concentration to learning a language that he could only ever hope to speak with one person.

  But then he realized that Shah Shan was not so much intent upon learning a language as upon learning all he could of the world that existed on the other side of the sky. Instinctively, the boy knew that the Bayani language was inadequate, that its simple collection of nouns and verbs and qualifying words could only provide a horribly distorted picture of the world that had once belonged to Paul Marlowe.

  So Shah Shan, with the typical fanaticism of genius, had applied himself not only to a new language but to the attitudes and philosophy of the one man who spoke that language. He had used Paul like an encyclopaedia; and in four Bayani months he had mastered not only the language but much of the knowledge of the man who spoke it.

  ‘You know, of course,’ said Shah Shan, ‘that in twenty-three days Enka Ne will return to the bosom of Oruri?’

  Paul sighed. ‘Yes, I know. But – is it necessary?’

  ‘So it has always been. The god-king reigns for a year. Then Oruri sees fit to renew the form.’

  ‘But is it necessary?’

  Shah Shan regarded him calmly. And in the eyes of the boy there seemed to Paul Marlowe to be a wisdom that passed beyond the realm of understanding.

  ‘It is necessary,’ said Shah Shan softly. ‘The face of a civilization cannot be changed in a single lifetime, Paul. You should know that. If Enka Ne did not offer himself gladly and with great joy, Baya Nor would disintegrate. Factions would arise. Most probably the end would be civil war … No. Enlightenment must come closely, peacefully. You, the instrument of chaos, are also the instrument of progress. You must plant the seed and hope that others will reap the harvest.’

  ‘Shah Shan, you are the first man to bring tears to my eyes.’

  ‘Let us hope that I am also the last. I know nothing of the new god-king. He has been found already, and is being instructed. But I know nothing of him. It may be that he will be more – what is the word I want?’

  ‘Orthodox?’ suggested Paul.

  ‘Yes, more orthodox. Perhaps he will insist on tradition. You will have to be careful.’ Shah Shan laughed. ‘Remember what happened when you introduced us to the wheel?’

  ‘Three men died,’ said Paul. ‘But now your citizens are able to use carts, wheelbarrows, rickshaws.’

  Shah Shan took a deep draught of the kappa spirit. ‘No, Paul, your arithmetic is wrong. I have not told you this before, but Enka Ne was forced to execute one hundred and seventeen priests – mostly of the blind order – in order to preserve your life and to permit the building of carts. It was a high price, was it not?’

  Paul Marlowe looked at him, appalled.

  SEVENTEEN

  It was a grey, cool morning. Winds blew erratically and disturbingly from the forest, filling the city of Baya Nor with strange odours – musky intimations of mortality.

  Death had been very much on the mind of Paul Marlowe. It was the prospect of death – and, perhaps, the recent spate of English lessons – that had caused a reversion to type. Poul Mer Lo, the pseudo Bayani, had given way to Paul Marlowe, an Englishman of the twenty-first century of Earth. A man who was depressed and revolted by the fact that his only friend on this alien world would be joyfully going to his death in six more days.

  He had grown to love Shah Shan. Love on Earth, reflected Paul bitterly, was suspect if not obsolete. And love for a man was more than obsolete: it was perverted. But here on this other fragment of dust on the other side of the sky, love could be admitted. There need be no justifications, no feelings of guilt, no sense of shame.

  But why did he love Shah Shan? Was it because, as Enka Ne, the boy had spared his life when it would have been so much safer, so much easier to have given thumbs down? Was it because, back on that other burnt out particle of fire, he, Paul, had never had a brother? Or a son …

  No matter what the reason, the fact remained. Shah Shan was going to die. Or, rather, Enka Ne, the god-king, was drawing close to the bosom of Oruri. And the brightest mind in the whole of Baya Nor was going to be sacrificed to the senseless traditions and superstitions of an ignorant little tribe that had not changed its ways for hundreds of years.

  What was that Bayani proverb? He who is alive cannot die. Paul Marlowe laughed. God damn Oruri! Then he laughed again as he realized that he ha
d only called on one god to confound another.

  Because of his sadness he had wanted solitude. So he had left the small house and Mylai Tui and had wandered slowly along the bank of the Canal of Life until he came to where the kappa fields met the heavy green perimeter of the forest. And now he was sitting on a small mound, watching the women toiling in the muddy fields as they tended the new crop.

  They were singing. The words came to him faintly, intermittently across the indecisive gusts of wind …

  ‘A little kappa, a little love.

  Oruri listens, waiting above.

  A little kappa, a little light.

  Oruri brings the gift of night.

  A little kappa, a little song.

  The day is short, the night is long.’

  Yes, thought Paul savagely, God damn Oruri! Oruri was the millstone round these people’s necks, the concept that kept them in a static, medieval society with a medieval technology and medieval attitudes that would hold them back for a thousand years.

  God damn Oruri!

  Suddenly, his silent monologue, his reverie of exasperation was broken by a long-drawn high pitched cry. He had never heard such a cry before. He didn’t know whether it was animal or human, whether it was close or distant.

  The cry came again, this time ending in a gasp. It was close – so close that he was briefly tempted to believe he had made it himself.

  It came from somewhere on the other side of the mound.

  He scrambled the few steps to the top of the hillock and looked down. There at the base on the other side a small Bayani woman squatted over a hole in the ground. It looked as if she had scooped the hole out of the rich soft soil with her fingers, for it was arranged in two neat piles on each side of her; and her hands were buried in the fresh, moist earth – presumably supporting her as she squatted.

  She had not seen him. Her gaze was fixed directly on the ground ahead of her. As he watched, fascinated, the cry came once more.

  It was not a cry of pain, nor was it a cry of fear. For no reason at all, the word keening came into Paul’s mind. He had never heard real primitive keening; but this, he supposed, was how it must sound.

  Oddly, he felt that he was intruding upon something intensely private. Yet, consumed with curiosity, he wanted to stay and watch. He lay down on the top of the mound, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. For a moment, the woman stretched, raising her head to the sky and sweeping the long hair from her face with a soil-stained hand. Then she fell back into the squatting position and let out another weird cry.

  He saw that she was big with child.

  And he understood that, for reasons best known to herself, she had come to this desolate spot to give birth.

  He witnessed the entire operation. It did not take long. The woman began to pant and bear down rhythmically. Soon the crown of the baby’s head had been forced past the lips of the vagina. Presently, its tiny body slid like a small dark fish into the hole that had been prepared for it.

  The woman rested for a time – still in the squatting position. Then with a movement that could not have been emulated by any European woman, and probably not by any woman of Earth, she bent expertly down, her head and shoulders low between her knees, and bit through the umbilical cord.

  Having done that, she knotted the length that was still attached to the baby’s stomach and then lifted the tiny body out of the hole, resting it on one of the piles of soft earth, where it began to cry lustily. It was not long, then, before the afterbirth came. The woman uttered one more cry – softer this time – then stood up and stretched herself. The wind from the forest blew, catching her long hair and streaming it behind her. She looked for a moment like a small black statue, cut from living rock, courageously defying time and the elements.

  Then the moment was gone for ever as, with a matter of fact gesture, she scooped up the newborn baby and with her feet swept the soil back into the hole on top of the steaming afterbirth. When the operation was finished, and still clutching the baby possessively to her breast, she stamped the earth flat. Then she sat down cross-legged to examine the child to whom she had just given birth.

  Paul Marlowe stared at her, obsessed with the notion that the entire incident was all part of some bizarre dream.

  Suddenly, she began to keen once more. This time the sound was shrill and desolate. It was a cry from the soul, a cry of anguish. And he knew that the dream was real.

  He stood up. The woman saw him. The sound died in her throat. She held the baby to her apprehensively, almost as if she were trying to deny its existence. For the first time there was fear on her face.

  Paul scrambled down the hillock.

  ‘Oruri greets you,’ he said gently.

  ‘The greeting is a blessing,’ she murmured. But there was a sob in her voice that she did not manage wholly to stifle.

  ‘Forgive me, but I was on the other side of the hill. I heard you and came to see what was happening. I could not help but watch.’

  ‘Lord, there is nothing to forgive.’ The tears were streaming down her face. ‘Truly, lord, there is nothing to forgive – except that …’ she could restrain herself no longer. Sobbing shook her small body; and the child at her breast became silent in the presence, perhaps, of tragedy.

  ‘What is it, my daughter?’ Unconsciously Paul lapsed into the vernacular Bayani.

  ‘O, my father, this, before Oruri – for whom I have nothing but love – is my third mortal sin. I weep because the blade of Enka Ne must now pass through my womb and through the fruit of my womb. Unless … Unless …’

  Paul Marlowe was perplexed. ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless my father is graciously able to unsee what he has now seen. Unless the greater purpose of Oruri can only be fulfilled by the departure of myself and this poor fragment of my flesh.’

  ‘My daughter, what is wrong? The child lives and you live. Can more be asked?’

  The woman had recovered herself a little. ‘Yes, lord,’ she said defiantly, ‘more can be asked. Much more can be asked. Observe the third sin.’ She held out the child.

  Paul Marlowe stared at it uncomprehendingly.

  ‘My daughter, you have a fine, strong son. Worse may happen in life than to bear such a child.’

  ‘Observe!’ said the woman, almost as a command. She held out the baby’s left hand.

  Paul Marlowe noted the three tiny fingers and thumb closing and unclosing spasmodically instantly, he felt a slight discomfort and prickling where the small finger had been struck from each of his hands by the orders of Enka Ne a few months ago.

  ‘So, your child is vigorous, my daughter,’ he managed to say.

  ‘Observe!’ repeated the woman, dully. She held out the baby’s right hand. On this one, four fingers and a thumb opened and closed spasmodically.

  Paul Marlowe was dumbfounded. Four fingers and a thumb!

  ‘Now my father will understand why I must go from this place and not display myself or this mortal sin in Baya Nor.’

  He gazed at her blankly.

  Suddenly, she fell to her knees and pressed her head against his legs. ‘My lord, you are a stranger and therefore, perhaps, Oruri has granted you a greater wisdom. Say only that you will unsee what you have seen. Say only that I may go peacefully from this place. I do not ask more.’

  ‘My daughter, there is much that I do not understand.’

  ‘Lord, there is much that none understands – save Oruri and Enka Ne. Say only that I may go from this place. Say only that you will unsee what you have seen.’ She gripped him painfully, beseechingly. He could feel the salt tears from her eyes upon his flesh.

  ‘From me, there is nothing for you to fear,’ he said softly.

  ‘Truly, I will unsee what I have seen … But, my daughter, where will you go?’

  She pointed to the dark green rim of the forest. ‘There, my father, is no sin and no punishment. It is where I and my child will live or die.’

  ‘I hope, then, that you will live,�
�� he managed to say.

  The woman rose to her feet, and smiled. ‘Pray for me,’ she said simply. ‘I have much need of it.’ She turned away.

  As in a trance, Paul Marlowe watched her walk purposefully towards the line of trees and shrubs that swayed in the cool breeze like an emerald sea.

  Faintly, the voices of the singers in the kappa fields came to him: ‘The day is short, the night is long.’

  EIGHTEEN

  After a long day spent in stretching and drying the largest kappa leaves he could find, until they became tough and durable like parchment, Paul Marlowe – feeling oddly, now, more like Poul Mer Lo – occupied his favourite position on the verandah step of his small thatched house. Inside the house, Mylai Tui was cooling kappa spirit by patiently dipping the earthenware jar in a large pitcher of water and allowing the water on the jar to evaporate. Presently, she would bring him a brimming calabash. Presently, he would get drunk.

  It was seventeen days since Enka Ne the 609th had returned to the bosom of Oruri. As the sun swung low on the western horizon, Paul Marlowe allowed his gaze to drift across the serene stretch of water that was called the Mirror of Oruri towards the sacred city and the lofty Temple of the Weeping Sun.

  He had not been present at the ceremony. Only those of high rank were permitted to be present on such solemn occasions. But Shah Shan had described the ritual to him on his last visit, three days before the event. It was attended, apparently, with all the pomp and ceremony of an ancient terrestrial coronation – with horrific variations.

  A coronation in reverse. For as Enka Ne approached the stone phallus against which he would lean joyfully while the living heart was torn from his chest, he would be stripped of all his regalia until nothing remained to be despatched to the bosom of Oruri but Shah Shan, a Bayani waterman with a fine brain and an excellent command of English.

  As soon as the blow had been struck and the beating heart removed – to the accompaniment of a great cry of joy from all present – the body would be allowed to fall to the base of the phallus. And then there would be the answering call – a single desolate bird cry; and Enka Ne the 610th would strut from behind the phallus, a bird covered in brilliant plumage, with iridescent feathers of blue and red and green and gold, and with brilliant yellow eyes and a hooked black beak.