by Nagle, Pati
Finally I was within striking distance. With a great cry I lunged with my whole body; clever Hare heard the rattling beads and shoved the totem forward to meet the boulder. Raven’s open beak bit into the boulder with a mighty crunch. I wiggled my shoulders a bit to sound the bells there, and I felt Hare try to move the totem in response, but Raven’s beak was firmly set. We had captured the boulder!
The stalking dance concluded with a series of moves that stopped the boulder’s tumbling. Next came the Hare chant, which thanks Hare for his assistance in the stalking dance, then concludes with these words: “Clever Hare, hear my voice: send this boulder home for my people from the great hunt!” Hare stretched his legs, propelling Raven, the boulder, and myself forward with a shuddering jolt, then leapt away. I saw the Hare totem tumble away behind me, empty, as Hare’s spirit departed.
The great hunt was nearly concluded. Thanks to Hare, the ice boulder was now headed toward the red world below, where it would give its life so that all the people can have air to breathe and water to drink. I thanked the boulder for this sacrifice and promised once more to remember it in my songs and stories, then began the Raven chant.
The Raven chant combines elements of the stalking chant and the Hare chant, and ends with these words: “Mighty Raven, hear my voice: spread your wings and carry me home from the great hunt!” But though I spoke the words properly and pressed the Raven amulet firmly, Raven did not release his hold on the boulder.
I was so shocked I did not even complete the final phrase. Raven had been so kind and helpful so far, I could not believe he would let me down now. But Raven is the Trickster as well as the Creator, and he had chosen this moment to play a trick on me.
Not knowing what else to do, I repeated the entire Raven chant, raising my voice as loud as I dared and pressing hard on the amulet with the final words, but again nothing happened.
For long moments I simply sat, open-jawed, there in Raven’s embrace. What could I have done wrong? I had performed every chant, every dance, faithfully and well. I did not recall missing any steps or dropping any syllables. Yet for some reason Raven refused to cooperate.
Then I remembered Raven’s greed, and how he stole the sun. Yes, Raven put the sun into the sky and brought light to the people, but it was not only for our benefit; it was because he wanted it! Obviously Raven was particularly fond of this ice boulder for some reason, and had decided to hold on to it. I had to convince him to let go, or he and I would join the ice boulder in its sacrifice.
The sun glinted over the horizon of the boulder clutched in Raven’s beak. Suddenly I had an idea.
I returned to the stalking chant, improvising madly to change it into a plea to Raven. I sang of the sun, of its great light and noble power. I compared the glorious sun to the gray and dingy boulder. I rattled my beads in the stalking dance, and Raven heard those at least, because he turned the whole boulder so he could look on the sun in its splendor.
Eagerly I chanted, praising the sun, praising Raven’s judgment and taste, imploring him to reconsider his choice. The sun shone hotly on one side of Raven’s beak; the other side was black against the icy boulder. I heard a creaking noise and felt Raven’s beak twitch indecisively. Perhaps my words were having some effect.
Once again I began the Raven chant, blending with it words of the stalking chant and my own improvised chant of praise for the sun. My mask filled with my words as I pressed the Raven amulet: “Mighty Raven, hear my voice: open your beak and carry me home from the great hunt!”
There was a grinding, creaking sound and Raven released the boulder at last. Then, with a great shuddering thrust, Raven spread his wings and beat forward. For many breaths Raven pressed on, as I watched the boulder fall away toward the red world below. Finally the sound of Raven’s wings faded away, leaving me alone with the silent stars.
There was no sign of the glass people’s village, which I had to locate in order to return to the people.
Anxiously I peered in every direction. I did a few steps of the stalking dance to turn Raven’s gaze around, but apart from a few stray ice boulders and the tiny twinkling lights of some distant totems, there was nothing to be seen anywhere. I had taken too long to convince Raven to release the boulder.
I was lost.
At first I was angry. Greedy Raven had doomed me by refusing to release the boulder. But after a time I realized that it was not Raven who had failed me, but I who had failed him. Raven is what he is, like everything in the world, and it is up to us to respect him for that and treat him fairly. I had tempted Raven with a boulder that was too large and too fine, and he had merely followed his own nature in preferring to hold on to it.
There were no more chants for me. I sat quietly, with the voices of the spirits ringing in my ears and the world seeming to turn around me, and waited for the end. I was sad, but I knew I had done my best and my clan would remember me in their songs. I closed my eyes and waited patiently for my unknown end.
Suddenly there was a splintering crash, and my eyes jerked open, expecting to see an ice boulder bearing down on me. Instead I saw a tiny figure clambering on the outside of my totem. It was one of the glass people, wearing a crude imitation of my own ceremonial garments! He waved and pointed at the door, beckoning me to come out. I carefully unfastened my belts and necklaces, then drifted to the door and opened it.
The glass person was waiting for me right outside the door. Quickly he pulled me away from Raven’s embrace, bundling me into his own conveyance. It was something like a house, only smaller and rounder and painted all in white and blue, and it floated in the air, attached to Raven by a harpoon on a cord. Raven looked sad and alone without Bear, Badger or Hare to keep him company. His bright colors were streaked from nose to tail; his beak was scarred from the ice boulder, and even his bold staring eyes seemed to weep. I spared one brief moment to thank him for all he had done for me, then let the glass person pull me into his house.
The air inside the house was oppressively hot and moist, and smelled of metal and burnt antler. I tried to thank the man for helping me, but he waved impatiently at my words and jabbered in his own tongue. He helped me remove my ceremonial garments, then removed his own and ushered me into the tiny main room of the house. Blinding white light glared from glass panels everywhere, and the walls, ceiling, and floor were crowded with meaningless decorations in the glass people’s awkward style.
Although the glass person could not speak the people’s speech, he had a machine which did. It explained that the man’s name was Maqandisen, and that he had been sent to help me by the glass people’s village in the sky. The machine’s tones were calm and pleasant, but Maqandisen’s eyes and the tone of his voice were hard.
Maqandisen seated himself in the room’s one chair and turned his back to me. Astonished at his rudeness, I could only watch as he busied himself with the tiny glowing squares fastened to the wall there. I have often noticed that the glass people are more interested in machines than in other people. After a time of this, there was a rushing sound and a pressure against my back; Maqandisen nodded once at his machines, then finally turned to face me. He said nothing, but his face clearly indicated that I was not welcome in his home. “Machine,” I said, “tell Maqandisen that I am profoundly grateful for his assistance and his hospitality. I was lost, and would surely have died before long if he had not come by.”
The machine repeated my words, then translated his response: “I came because I was ordered to come. The journey to the village of the watchers will take one-third of a day. Sit quietly and do not touch anything.” Once again he turned his back. This was the glass people’s hospitality! But I was a guest in his house, so I determined to respect his ways.
For a long time I simply watched the man as he stared intently at his little colored squares and occasionally poked one with a finger. Every once in a while he glanced over his shoulder at me, but when he saw I was watching he always looked away quickly. Finally I had to ask: “Is there nothing I ca
n do to express my gratitude?”
Angrily he turned and spat: “No! I never wanted to risk my life and my house to save you. The watchers have been watching you for too long. They have forgotten why we made you.”
I scarcely knew how to respond to this arrogant lie. “You didn’t make me. My mother and father made me.”
He rolled his eyes. “My people made your people. All of them. We started with tiny pieces from our own bodies, then changed them to make you more suitable for this world. We gave you Whale’s lungs so you could breathe the thin air, and Owl’s eyes for the thin light.”
“That is a lie. Raven made the people!”
“We made your Raven too. We put together your bodies from pieces of our people and animals, and we put together your legends from pieces of our people’s legends.” There was a smile on his face, but it was a grim smile. “We built your whole culture to keep you alive in the bad weather and make you respect the animals and plants.”
I knew this tiny man didn’t make Raven. I had felt the power of Raven’s wings. All I had to do was show how his words crossed themselves, and he would be forced to admit his lies. “You didn’t have to make the people respect the animals and plants. People are smart. They know that we all depend on each other.”
At that he laughed. “Your people know that because we made them know it. My people were not so smart. They had to learn it the hard way.”
“How can you say your people made mine, if they are not even smart enough to respect the other animals in the world?”
“Oh, my people are very clever at putting things together. But we are lazy, and short-sighted. We never stop to think about what will happen once we’ve built something and set it in motion.” He stared out the glass into the black sky. “We built machines to do our work for us, but we didn’t build machines to clean up after the machines. Not until too late. Then we had to start over, here.” Suddenly he turned back to me with eyes full of hate. “We never do anything ourselves if we can make a clever tool to do our work for us. We made the lichens to turn the rock to dirt. We made the caribou to control the lichens. We made the wolves to control the caribou. And we made you to control the wolves. But who will control you when you get out of hand?”
“No one controls us. We are a proud and free people!”
“I know that. But the watchers think they control you through your legends. They give you thruster trees and other things to make you more useful. They don’t understand that the most useful tool is also the most dangerous.”
“Your lies are outrageous. No one can make a whole people!”
“I told you we are clever, but lazy. We do not build a whole people. We build just a few, then they make more of themselves.” He laughed again, short and bitter. “We made you because you were a good trade. A small effort expended, a little patience, and in the end we get a whole world.”
“Lies built on lies. Arrogance piled on arrogance!”
“The arrogance is not mine, it is the watchers’. The lies are theirs as well. I am just a simple pilot who speaks the truth.” He stared straight into my eyes. “Not all of my people are like the watchers. Some of us believe it would be better if you had never been made. But now you are here; what should be done with you?”
“We have always been here, ever since this world was new. We should be left alone to live our lives in peace.”
“I wish that we could.”
There was a long silence then. Maqandisen turned away from me and stared at his colored lights, and I watched the stars turn slowly outside the glass.
We did not exchange another word until we arrived at the glass people’s village in the sky—the village of the watchers, as Maqandisen had called it. It floated in the sky, round as a sun hat, and hundreds of totems and glass people’s houses were gathered around it. Just before we entered the village, Maqandisen looked at me and said, “I did not want this task. I do not like the watchers or the things they have made. But I am glad to have met you.”
“Thank you. I am indebted to you for saving my life. But you have terrible manners, even for a glass person.”
At that he just smiled sadly.
The great hunt participants from all the other clans were there in the village of the glass people, and they greeted me as one returned from the dead. The glass people there asked me if Maqandisen had told me any strange tales, and I told them that he had not. I don’t know why—Maqandisen had told me nothing but lies, why should I protect him with a lie of my own? But I felt it was the right thing to do.
Soon after I arrived, we were all bundled into one of the glass people’s strange houses, which carried us to their largest city. There we held a great dance to celebrate our successful hunt and commemorate the lives of those who had not returned. In the evening we shared tales from our different clans, and there was much hilarity over the differences in customs between us. The next day we said our good-byes and began the long trip back to our homes.
When I returned to my own clan there was much rejoicing. The people held a mighty feast in my honor, and I told the tale of my great hunt—the tale I am telling you now—for the first time. Then I returned to my life as an ordinary hunter.
For some years I was troubled by Maqandisen’s words. Could he have been telling the truth? It would explain much. But in the end I recalled Bear’s mighty roar and the powerful thrust of Raven’s wings, and I knew in my heart that the old tales are true.
Maqandisen, like all his people, was a great liar. Never doubt that it was Raven who made the people, and the caribou and all the other living things, and put the sun and moons in the sky so that we could have light. Maqandisen’s claim that his people made us was nothing more than an arrogant boast. But sometimes there is truth to be found inside a lie.
What if the glass people believe their own lies? What if they really do believe they made us as a tool to shape the world for them, and someday they decide the world has been sufficiently shaped? The glass people may emerge from their cities and seek to assert their domination over us and all the world. We must prepare weapons and strategies against that day.
I know that some consider me insane. Others look on me as a prophet. I am neither; I am just an old man who had a great adventure once, and learned a lesson from it that I think is very important. When you are grown and meet the glass people yourself, I hope you will remember my words, and then you will tell your children and they will tell their children.
Trade fairly with the glass people. Be alert for their lies. But watch them carefully and learn from them. They know many things we do not. But they do not know how much we know. Some day I think we will surprise them.
Now my tale is done, and the winter is just a little shorter.
Parsley, Space, Rosemary, and Time
Katharine Kerr
When Resnick called for submissions for Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, my first thought was “Oh no.” Then it occurred to me that the original story had had a lot more humor to it than most people realized. Immediately I thought of the efreets as aliens, drunken aliens. Aladdin in outer space sounds like an odd concept, but it intrigued me enough to write this story. I’ve always been very fond of it just because of the humor.
∞ ∞ ∞
During the Great Disruption, when flux in the Space/Time continuum scrambled the hyperspace shunts, the mercantile planets of the Mapped Sector suffered the most, for obvious reasons, from being thrust into isolation. One such was New Samarkand, the fourth planet of a large yellow star out near the galactic rim. The only reason the world had ever been settled was the fresh water ocean, cheap fuel for the fusion drives of the merchant fleet, that covered most of its surface. Without the fleet and a steady supply of imports, the planet’s small population soon found itself hovering on poverty’s edge.
Mostly humans lived on New Samarkand, though small colonies of a supposedly native race called Squeakers shared the only continent. While the humans farmed or kept river towns alive down on the plains, the
Squeakers burrowed out warrens up in the hills and ate by gathering and hunting. Occasionally a few would drift down to trade chunks of semi-precious stones for grain and for parsley, an Old Earth plant that got them drunk, thanks to, or so the only human doctor who’d ever studied the problem decided, its abnormally high Vitamin A content. After one of these green binges, the Squeakers tended to brag that their race, too, came from the distant stars, just as humanity did, but no one paid much attention.
The Squeakers’ speech register included frequencies so high that human ears couldn’t catch them, and only with great effort could a Squeaker speak low enough to make itself understood. Since few humans cared about what they had to say, few bothered to try. The real problem was, quite simply, that to humans they looked like toys. No more than a meter high, they had chubby round bodies, covered in gray or bluish-gray fur, big round heads with two pairs of button-bright eyes, and four short arms. When they spoke, chirping away, they tended to bounce up and down on their stubby little legs. Their only clothing was a loin-wrap of flowered trade cloth. Few humans managed to take them seriously, especially in those tense years when all technology stood in danger of crumbling away, and forever.
There was, however, one man who did learn to talk with Squeakers. In a town named China lived a widow, Rosemary Dean, with her only child, Albert. The widow Dean was much respected, because only she could operate and maintain the wire-spinning machinery at the local foundry, and without wire, there would be no cables, and without cables, the last hi-tech devices would die. For years Rosemary kept the secrets of spinning wire to herself. She wanted to hand them down to her son, ensuring him respect and a steady income after her death, but as Al Dean became first a pimply teenager, then a lanky young man, she realized that much as she loved him, he was no man to trust with an important job like the spinning of wire.