Of a Note in a Cosmic Song; Part Four

by Nōnen Títi

  His attention was drawn by a disturbance at the side, where a group of men were trying to get the last girl to join. The harder the girl cried, the more attention the group got and the more hands to help lift her. Only this wasn’t pretence – her shrill voice was panicked. Aryan had witnessed those kinds of situations before; it would end up with the girl being forced one way or the other. It would end up with people hurt, arrested, and accused. “Let her go.”

  The surprised faces looking up at him belonged to boys, two and a half kor at best. They shouldn’t have been here. He recognized the girl; she shouldn’t have been here either.

  “She wants to. She’s just shy,” one of them defended himself.

  “Let her go!”

  “She’ll go telling on us.”

  “No, I won’t. Just let me go home,” Laytji cried.

  “She won’t; now leave her alone.”

  They lowered her onto the ground, but didn’t release their grip yet. Then one of them became indignant. “Nobody invited you here, old man. Go home yourself.”

  “That makes one of us a man then, kid. A man has no need to force a girl.”

  The punch Aryan was ready to avoid didn’t come. The boy recovered from his loss of words and started taunting Aryan to save face in front of his buddies.

  “Let her go!” Aryan repeated his order.

  But the boys only withdrew when Haslag showed up.

  “No wonder you’re such a happy person,” Aryan told him. “Nobody dares to stand in your way.”

  “Not always,” Haslag answered.

  Laytji sought protection close to Aryan. “Nobody told me what this was about,” she whimpered.

  Kolyag joined them, asking for details, and then expressed his irritation with the presence of these children.

  “Gossip goes around,” Haslag told him.

  He was right. This was no by-invitation-only club.

  “You had better keep quiet about this or your dad will kill you,” Kolyag threatened Laytji.

  “He’s not my dad,” she replied.

  To the question of why she’d come here, Laytji answered she’d been with Sian, but Sian had deserted her to meet a guy in the dunes.

  In the meantime the dancing had finished and it became noisy with men trying to attract the attention of the girls to their goods. When she realized what was going on, Laytji started to cry again.

  Annoyed with ending up as chaperone for young girls every time he came here, Aryan picked up his blanket. He’d done his trading and had no desire for any more involvement. He told the men he’d take Laytji home, since he couldn’t very well leave her now, and he owed Daili at least that much.

  “You won’t tell Kalim, will you?” she asked when they were alone.

  “Why not?” Why was everybody so concerned about telling? Laytji had done nothing wrong, except maybe coming here.

  “Just because I don’t feel like a speech,” she said.

  Aryan didn’t answer.

  Without talking they climbed to the top of the dune. Then Laytji suddenly put her hand on Aryan’s arm and pointed. Not too far over, descending from the path Aryan had tried to avoid because of the couples nearby, was a large group of men, their silhouettes pierced with long rods, the shape of immobilizers. An army! Roilan’s, no doubt. They’d also heard the gossip. Aryan recognized Sian by her long blonde hair. Just then the group stumbled over one of the lucky pairs, who were duly taken captive.

  “You go home, run, and don’t stop until you get there,” Aryan told Laytji. “If you go that way, they won’t see you.” He pushed her up the trail they’d been walking, hoping there was no second army there.

  She started snottering again.

  “Get going or I’ll kick your butt,” he ordered.

  That worked better.

  As soon as she was out of sight, he retreated back down the trail and alerted the first people he could find, so they’d be able to make a run for it.

  But that wasn’t what happened. Faster than Aryan expected, the beach-goers grouped together into a similar army of ex-guards, farmers, and ex-users as was Roilan’s group, who by now had reached the flat sand and were approaching.

  “We’ve got the ocean behind us, which makes it harder for them to see,” Kolyag said, pushing an immobilizer into Aryan’s hands.

  “What are you intending to do with these things? They won’t work.”

  “You bet they will. We’re not stupid; they’re all charged up.”

  Kolyag didn’t explain how he’d done that with Roilan running the only working generator in town. He was about to turn away when Aryan grabbed his arm. “Listen to me. You can’t start a war.”

  “I’m not starting anything. I’m only defending.”

  “If someone gets hurt here tonight, you’ll end up in prison. What about your family?”

  Kolyag glared at him. He knew damn fine what that would mean: He was on probation in a way. One wrong move and he could lose his kids; everybody knew it. He yanked his arm loose from Aryan’s hand. “I’m not running.”

  Aryan couldn’t blame him. He had no intention of going down for Roilan himself, but this was getting out of hand. Everybody seemed determined to fight; it was in the way they breathed and straightened their backs, the eagerness in their eyes as they squinted into the half-dark. Aryan recognized the smell: something he used to be part of. He tried to force his body to get in synch with the atmosphere around him, to respond as it would have in the past, to feel the charge of the excitement as he could feel the charge of the immobilizer, but he couldn’t get himself hyped. Maybe he was getting old, indeed, but this was no exaltation; it was stupidity. Just as he had with the dancing girls, he now felt like an onlooker, no longer infected with the hormones that could make this happen. He was no longer part of it. All he really wanted was to get back to his lander, but all these people were in the way.

  Irritated, he picked up a rock to skim into the water. Halfway through lifting it he felt it move – it was alive! In a sudden panic he swung around, letting go of it in midair. It went flying into the direction of Roilan’s people. In the next instant he saw the spark of a discharge opposite him and dropped to the ground; a reflex more than a thought. The charge hit the ocean behind them a moment later.

  And then it happened: A sizzling, squealing sound filled the air as fountains of glittering water were thrown up into the sky. Fireworks of light and sound, endless sparks and bangs filled the entire ocean surface as far as the eye could see. Stunned into silence, all the men, lying low, watched the spectacle.

  “She’s hurt,” Haslag said and started crawling towards the water’s edge.

  Aryan followed him at a distance. Could Haslag be right? Had they injured a life form? Like the puddles in the hills, was this glittering mass a being? But it had never complained about the kabin.

  The noise changed to a more familiar and menacing sound: that of the red fog. The panic this caused sent most people running for cover in the dunes, no longer concerned with which side they were on.

  Aryan stayed with Haslag, who seemed only interested in the state of the ocean. He kept his ears covered and his body low to the ground, hoping the fog wouldn’t notice them. “This is ridiculous,” he said out loud, when he realized what he was thinking.

  “Yeah, just don’t touch the water,” Haslag replied.

  The fog never found them. It moved away over the dunes heading south. The ocean lost its sparkle at dawn. Only then did Aryan and Haslag walk home. Aryan longed for his mat, but found Kolyag sitting on his step, waiting. He looked beat. “Benjamar wants us at his home.”

  “What for?”

  “People have died is all I know. I don’t know how he found out,” Kolyag said.

  Laytji couldn’t have even reached town yet when the fireworks went off. From where she would have been, from town even, it must have looked like there was a full-blown war on. Bue forbid she was among the dead.

  Aryan held out his hand to help Kolyag back to his
feet. “Let’s go see.”

  The door to the small home stood open. Benjamar motioned for them to come in and sit down. Aryan answered a nod from Frantag, who sat in Benjamar’s chair. The only other person inside was Roilan, sitting on the floor. He didn’t look up.

  “I’m reminded of something my son once told me,” Benjamar started. “He said people go to war because of a basic instinct that drives them, against all common sense. I’m beginning to wonder if he was right.”

  “I never meant for it to get to this,” Kolyag said.

  “Nobody ever does.”

  “All we wanted was to be left free to trade and leave.”

  “So you use weapons to defend that freedom. When has that ever worked?”

  Kolyag shrugged, looking like a little boy called to order, as was Roilan, who must have gotten his share of the old man’s scorn already.

  “And you were free to leave anytime. You never needed to make a secret of that. This isn’t DJar; nobody owns the land and nobody has ID chips to bind them to a piece of soil,” Benjamar added.

  “What about people dying?” Aryan asked, trying to get to the point.

  “Thirteen people are dead in the dunes, due to the fog. Four still unaccounted for as far as we can tell. We’ve got a search party out there,” Frantag answered.

  “The fog was triggered by whatever happened to the ocean. I’ve never seen it come so fast. It was angry, like a mother after her young is hurt,” Aryan told him, repeating more or less what he’d heard Haslag say.

  “And her young got hurt with an immobilizer?” Benjamar looked at Roilan.

  “I never told him to shoot.”

  “You gave him the weapon.”

  Benjamar then went into one of his unavoidable speeches. What it came down to was that the mere existence of the immobilizers caused injuries, whether to people or to the native life forms, and he wanted all immobilizers destroyed. “Frantag told me there were two sets at the start of the journey, so I want two sets accounted for. Each of you collect every weapon your people have and bring them here. I want them deactivated and destroyed by the end of the day. You can work together.”

  Neither Kolyag nor Roilan protested the order, though their unwillingness was in the way they looked at each other.

  “You may as well get started,” Benjamar prompted when neither of them moved.

  Aryan wanted to get up as well, but Benjamar shook his head. It seemed the reason for his own presence here would soon be revealed. Something about that notion made his stomach cringe.

  “I didn’t think you’d be foolish enough to let yourself in with that sort of activities,” Benjamar said the moment the two men had left.

  Aryan was struck dumb by the directness of the assault. He felt his defensive juices rise with the hairs on his arms. “Don’t beat me up, I’m not your son,” he answered.

  “That may be true, but he’s still judge and you’re too old for Daili’s daughter,” Frantag said, almost ruining Aryan’s resolve to collect his calm.

  “What exactly are you trying to accuse me of?”

  “She said she was with you when the fighting started.”

  So she was okay. Aryan stood up from the chest. “With me, yes. We were walking home. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “But you were there with Kolyag’s gang?”

  “Yes, I was there. I was in no gang. I was selling my wine, no more. I got stuck in the middle like Laytji did. If you’d give people a bit of freedom, these things wouldn’t happen.”

  “If people behaved in a responsible manner, I wouldn’t need to forbid things,” Frantag answered.

  Aryan had enough of it by then. He wasn’t here to be insulted, nor to restart an age-old discussion. “Why don’t you dream on? I’m leaving. I’ve got a long walk home.”

  “What are you doing in that crater anyway?” Benjamar asked.

  “For one thing, staying away from people like you.”

  “I’m told you’ve taken Branag’s tools to repair the landers.”

  “Look Benjamar, I’m a free man. I can do what I like and I don’t need to explain myself. I also don’t need to listen to accusations based on presumptions. I will bring the tools back when I’m done with them.”

  He was already halfway out the door when Benjamar spoke again. “Do you believe it true that the ocean was expressing hurt?”

  Aryan stopped at this more honest question. “It sure as Bue sounded like it.”

  No more words came, so he left, satisfied he had been able to control himself. For a moment he considered keeping the immobilizer he’d parked at his home. He could take it to the lander and be guaranteed some peace, but that would get Kolyag in trouble.

  On the walk north to the crater his thoughts went back to the moment right before the shot. The discharge had been a reaction to the unexpected, the blob he’d thrown. People had started shooting because the weapons were there. Without them there would have been an honest fight. Nobody would have died, but a fight there would have been.

  Why? Because the men had needed to fight. Benjamar was right. Any excuse to get physically involved, the exhilaration burning in their eyes. They’d been happy to see Roilan’s army; a chance to prove their bravery, their skill, their lust, or maybe just to vent their anger. A show at night was fine, but most of those men got no more out of it than just that. They were spectators where they wanted to be part of the act. Not allowed to touch, not enough labour to satisfy their needs, nobody to take control, the wine potent enough to augment their impulses. No wonder they’d jumped at the chance when it came.

  By the time he had finished another few days of work on the lander, Aryan had his idea ready in his head: a bit of competition, simple games, give everybody a chance. Activities as they’d had on DJar – sports, running, climbing the hillside. Wine for the first one there, the fastest swimmer, the one carrying the largest load of turf, wrestling matches.

  He went to Haslag first, whose enthusiasm helped get the right people involved. Once started, many ideas came and more people wanted to join – all kinds of people, tired of trivial jobs and failing crops; people who needed some fun. From individual games, they soon had enough for team play. From sports they went to challenges. No longer was wine needed to get them going; the natural hormones were rushing.

  Aryan forgot about the lander for now. He was the umpire needed to keep score. He couldn’t compete with most of these young bodies, but he got his kick out of seeing the energy flow, the smiles on their faces, motivated to act, to win, to live. Aryan was once again the pilot: He steered the events and all came to him to say how great they were.

  THE WISHING GAME

  Station Six was in its third kor and the days were cloudy with Kun shining a diffuse orange that didn’t really change much at night; Kun didn’t quite set and the sky didn’t get totally dark.

  Every few days, Kunag painted the changing environments in his pack. From swamp and barren ground with many lakes the landscape had gradually changed, the lakes now few and far between. At the same time, the land was starting to rise. Just like near town, there were hills to the west with countless bourns and pools of clean water, just when the mosses disappeared.

  “It’s almost as if they’re here just for us,” Saski said, since there seemed no other life-form around to drink from them.

  The variety of vegetation grew until the land was thick with shapes and colours. There were no suspended clouds to keep moisture in, but a real canopy. Some of what grew was like what they’d found before; the solid base with tube-like extensions, now named “pipe organs”, were everywhere. These stretched taller than even Wolt and each had at least eight real pipes and occasionally a fake one, which Leyon discovered by shattering them.

  But there were many more things they had never seen. Higher than the tubes and most impressive of all were what formed the canopy: Enormous mushroom-shaped growths, supported by one central stem and bigger than the roof of a home, were lined up one after the other, b
locking out the light of Kun, making the path they walked nearly dark.

  The “flattops”, as they started calling them, were much stronger than they looked. Leyon tried to climb one of the stems, but it bent a little under his weight before bouncing right back, knocking him to the ground.

  “Maybe it doesn’t want you to climb it,” Kunag said, and nobody looked at him in surprise.

  Apart from the tall growths, the forest was thick with strange shapes that stood waist-high. Most were simple, like the reeds or tuber grasses, but others were thicker and immobile, so they had to go around them rather than through.

  The understory was the thickest, full of low-growing plamals that covered the ground, forcing them to look down all the time so as not to step on anything. Progress was very slow: Every night they had to find a natural clearing, many of which were almost too small for all of them to stretch out in, and if there were none they had to walk on until they found something. After two kor without much sleep, they all huddled around another tiny recess, dug to make a fire for some water.

  “I’m looking for a place where natural foods grows,” Hani said, without addressing anybody in particular.

  “I know that game. You have to remember what everybody says, right?” Saski asked. “Okay, so, I’m looking for a place with natural food and large enough for a village.”

  “I’m looking for a place with natural food, large enough for a village, and plenty fresh water,” Yako added.

  The others joined in and mentioned building materials, plamals enough for shelter, good air to breathe, something to make fire from, and medicinal plants. Sinti, when it was her turn, wanted a beach to go swimming, and Doret added, “enough rain, but not too much”.

  Kunag, who was second last, struggled to list them all and then added “lots of real animals”.