No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  I translated for the others. I was leaning against the wall at the back of the cabin, one knee bent and the boot sole against the wood, head bowed, listening. I let them speak directly to each other, facilitating their conversation without interrupting it, whatever words were said. I took no side, simply letting my translation flow from the shadow, echoing their words and rejoinders in the correct languages: Awian to Trisian, Trisian to Low Awian.

  Wrenn said, “But Tris is part of the Empire too!”

  “No, we are not. One man should not rule five lands. The Senate was shocked to find that one man has so much power. You have already tainted Capharnaum.”

  Mist said, “Senator, let us-”

  Vendace pointed at her. “On the occasion of your arrival last year, the Senate discussed the likelihood of more visits from your island. We gave you the benefit of the doubt but now we accept that we were wrong and the stories were correct. Although I personally have no idea what to do about the Insect, the Senate is making plans.”

  The black moniliform antenna lay on Mist’s desk beside her cafetière. Vendace pushed it around with his finger as he spoke. “You say there are thousands of Insects?”

  I said, “Hundreds of thousands infest the north of our continent. We’re sorry we lost this one. The tunnel was empty when I returned with bowmen and-um-harpooners.”

  Vendace said, “Jant, you can actually fly, and you can run…The merchants reported the speed you were flying!”

  “I’m the fastest thing in the world,” I said. “That’s the only evidence I can give to prove that we’re immortal.”

  Vendace sighed. “Some of the Senate believe you, but it makes no difference to us. Tris should be left alone by mortals and immortals alike. If you ask me, being able to fly is wonderful pleasure enough without heaping accolade and immortality on you as well.” He toyed with the antenna, asked plaintively, “Why did you set an Insect on us?”

  Mist said, “We didn’t. It was an accident and we’re profoundly sorry. Please accept our apologies; mishaps like this will never happen again. The Insect escaped; we should have taken more care.”

  “We’ll hunt it down,” Lightning said solidly. His face had a bleak impassive expression. He stood by the door, occasionally checking Vendace’s entourage. “We’re good at that; it’s what we do. I will meet any proposal of compensation. At least allow us to give you advice and recompense for your people.”

  “I’ll go after it,” Wrenn volunteered.

  “Yes, we know; be quiet,” I said.

  Vendace said, “The librarians are looking for charts. They’ve told me that the sewer drains the forum and branches throughout Capharnaum for six hundred meters. So you brought a legendary maneater as an object of wonder, and loosed it into the system under our town. I am astounded.”

  “I can’t translate this quickly,” I complained.

  Mist asked the senator, “If Tris communicates with the Castle even once again, we need a spokesman; a governor, you see. Tell me what you want.”

  “The Senate wants you to leave.”

  “No. Tell me what you want.”

  Vendace turned pale, controlling his anger. He spread his dry palms like a scarecrow playing an accordion and said, “I have learned some words of Awian: Goodbye.” He pushed his chair back and turned to leave.

  Mist said, “No, wait!”

  She touched the chair asking him to sit down, though he looked very uncomfortable. She sighed and refilled her coffee glass. Without looking at me, she said, “Comet, give us the benefit of your clever mind.”

  “I say we stop insulting them. We should report to San and follow his instructions. I don’t know about this town, but we’re San’s servants. I think he should make the whole Senate the governor; they seem to take decisions with one voice.”

  “Don’t interpret this,” Mist said. “Forget the stubborn, overbearing Senate. The common man of Capharnaum will want something. I don’t understand the desire that drives him.” She paced to the stern windows and looked out. “Every people I have met want more than they can supply for themselves. In fact, every single person’s greed is for more than he needs.”

  “Not Rhydanne,” I said.

  “Aye, a case to prove my point. Rhydanne are never drunk enough.” She nudged me as she paced back and nodded surreptitiously toward the casement. I peered through to see a crowd, mostly men, gathering on the quayside. Tridents glinted in their hands, with nets and the swords we had sold them. They stood in a passive silence that I found incredibly intimidating.

  “Lightning, come here and take a look at this.”

  Lightning muttered, “They think the Empire is another little island.”

  Mist said, “Vendace, immortality’s the most important offer your people could possibly have. The very opportunity will make you idle Zascai feel alive! Tris is so stagnant I feel smothered. We can tell that it hasn’t changed for hundreds of years. You won’t reject the Empire once you’ve seen its treasures-the sky-worshiping spires of Awia, mills of Hacilith! Everybody wants to be Eszai! Why turn the proposal down? Don’t you wish to excel? Don’t you want to know what the world will be like five centuries from now?”

  Vendace was silent for a time, then he murmured something that had the rhythm of a quotation and sounded thoroughly resigned. He shot me an envious glance. “It may be that we will not gain immortality, and we’ll never be able to fly, but we all want to stay equal. We’ll keep peace and our own pace. You have already threatened to upset the balance by coming here.”

  “Give us a few more days,” Mist tried. “We can buy another crate of gold. Serein will find the Insect.”

  “The Senate’s decision can neither be rescinded nor altered without a seven-day discussion. You must leave today.”

  “I need to lay on enough water for the journey,” Mist countered. “We’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “Yes, you will.” Vendace pulled his short cloak to his body, stood and left the cabin. Lightning stepped aside to let him go.

  Mist gave a little scream and clenched her fists. “Ah! Damn! Jant, I’ve one more chance,” she said in Plainslands. “Follow him.”

  “What did you say?” Lightning demanded. “Don’t exclude Wrenn!”

  “It’s private,” she spat.

  On the main deck, Vendace’s friends surrounded him. He looked reassured as they patted him on the back, and they began to file down the gangplank, Vendace shepherding them in front.

  Mist caught the edge of his green-bordered cloak. The ex-fisherman tweaked it away and glared at her. She said, “Jant, tell him this: I can give him eternal life. It doesn’t matter whether we feel affection or not.”

  She unnerved me. We must certainly be in trouble if Mist was prepared to play her last card. “Do you mean…?” I said doubtfully.

  Her voice cleared of any vagueness, “Aye! I mean marriage! A link through me to the Circle. Time is their currency, so immortality is my most priceless offer to one man.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Tell him, damn you-we don’t have three days to mull it over!”

  I repeated her words for Senator Vendace.

  He was quiet, studying her for a long moment. His mouth twisted in disgust. “No. How dare you bribe me to breach the Senate’s resolution? To betray them! Just go! And never, ever return!” He strode down the gangplank without a backward glance.

  Over the next hour, the Capharnai melted away from the quay leaving an air of animosity. I watched the streets for the Insect through Mist’s telescope, while the ships bustled with preparation to sail home.

  “Well,” I said, embarrassed. “You blew that, Ata Dei.”

  She muttered, “Next morning we’ll set our backs and rudders to this bloody insular town.”

  Nobody was present to watch us leave. As our sails filled and our figureheads pointed toward the open sea, I felt my trepidation mounting. I did not want to go out there again so soon. I contemplated that the Trisians mig
ht never raise their sights or be forced into contest by a Challenger or by ambition as unquenchable as Mist’s. Who here cared about the Castle’s self-imposed trials? Half a minute’s difference in racing time in a Challenge could literally be my downfall. A millimeter’s distance on an archery target means life or death to Lightning. The Trisians will never know our accuracy or stamina but then they would never wear themselves out for a cause. By god, I liked them.

  I sat at the stern, played a Rhydanne game of cat’s cradle, and watched Tris shrink into the distance. The wind battered the clouds down to a thick bank on the skyline around it. Our caravels trailed a path back to Capharnaum harbor, but the waves distorted then covered our wakes as if the sea was determined to hide the trail we had blazed. I hoped that the spectacular failure of Mist’s diplomacy would pass. I wished that Tris would eventually become a region like Darkling, which is part of the Empire but nobody expects it to get involved. The Rhydanne know vaguely that the Empire exists but really don’t care; unfortunately the island of Tris has more to offer than Darkling.

  That night I could see the lights of Capharnaum but not the land, so I became convinced the town was floating on the ocean. The next morning Tris had diminished so much on the horizon that I could put my thumb over it. By supper it was a speck; by the following day it had gone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When we lost sight of the island on the evening of May 10, I had nothing to do but cross the sea as an idle passenger. Melowne and Stormy Petrel sailed across the longitudes. We were two ships standing out proud on the ocean.

  I settled into my sleeping bag on my cabin floor, with a jug of coffee and cat, and some licorice root to chew. I filled my silver fountain pen, carefully propped the book on my sharp knees and began to read. I transcribed the first chapter of the small volume I had stolen from the library, A History of Tris, by Sillago of Capharnaum.

  In the year 416-a date that every schoolchild knows-galleys from the mainland arrived at our then uninhabited island, and anchored in the mouth of Olio River. During the following day, the settlement of Capharnaum was founded on the northern bank and the mighty galleys were brought upriver and set aflame, a remarkable symbolic act that marked the dawn of our present society.

  Why did this flotilla of galleys leave the mainland and put their hope in the creation of a new country? In this book I will argue that it was due to the ingress into the mainland of a swarm of Insects. According to the only manuscript surviving from the Pentadrica, Capelin’s account of the second decade of the fifth century, I maintain that Insects truly existed and were not the symbolic creatures that recently fashionable theories would have us believe. Moreover, they must have been rather larger than the ants of our island. My esteemed colleague Vadigo of Salmagundi has on numerous occasions criticized my belief in Insects. However, my research draws heavily on the precious Capelin manuscript housed in the Amarot library with which, perhaps as it is such a distance from Salmagundi, my colleague does not trouble himself.

  The Queen of Pentadrica, Alyss, traveled with her court-a rudimentary senate-from her liberal and enlightened country known as the jewel of the Fivelands, to satisfy her curiosity about reports of the problematic Insects. Capelin, a scrivener at the Pentadrican court, relates that five Insects had appeared suddenly in the vale of northeast Awia and were the subject of much curiosity. Apparently of their own volition the Insects confined themselves in a small area behind a wall. The nearby Awians were observing and throwing logs into the enclosure when hundreds more manifested so suddenly they had to flee for their lives. When Alyss drew close to the boundary the creatures burst out, devouring the Queen and her entire entourage. Insects laid the fields waste, eating the crops and building as vigorously as our own ants. Capelin recorded that more Insects emerged than could ever have fitted inside, but this may be an understandable exaggeration or poetic flourish.

  An envoy brought the news of Alyss’s death to her palace and to the King of Morenzia in Litanee. Various of the Morenzian nobility immediately laid claim to the leadership of Pentadrica-that is, the throne.

  The crude southern horsemen, the Plainslanders, realized that they could also gain land. We do not know, unfortunately, what a horseman would look like. The Morenzian humans and the horsemen fought over Pentadrican land and many of the Morenzian nobility were killed. One suspects the Pentadricans defending their towns and hamlets could do little against forays from the barbarians beyond their southern borders. Capelin’s harrowing description of the destruction of Strip Linchit village forms the appendix to this book.

  The kingdom of Awia tried to organize resistance to the Insects-presumably gathering young men whose hunting parties were now asked to net the maneaters. We know for certain that thousands of Awians were displaced southward and determined to settle the north of Pentadrica. Historians following Vadigo have stated that from this point the story seems credible, but have given no criteria for their method of determining between reality and allegory.

  Awians and Pentadricans both appealed to San for help. This mythological figure was supposed to have been given eternal life by god before it left the world; to advise the world on god’s behalf. San seems to have been an itinerant sage who objectively advised all the courts of the five countries involved and was respected by them. Capelin assumes his reader knows the identity of San and gives no evidence to support immortality. It was probably a rumor arising around an extremely adroit and possibly aged wise man as it is not possible to credit the idea that he was wandering the world for four hundred years before the Insects appeared.

  Some theoreticians postulate that San was god in a different guise; some hold that the appearance of Insects marked the return of god, or that god intended Insects to triumph over people and form the next phase of creation. The argument that there is a god at all is beyond the scope of this book.

  It is self-evident that San realized the Insects were the greatest threat since he attempted to organize bands to hunt them. If Insects were some sort of metaphor for decadence and never in- tended to be understood literally as animals, how are we to explain the decision of San as recorded in Capelin’s document? It is the best evidence available that Insects, whatever they were, were tangible. San blamed the Morenzian nobles for the civil war and, although some accompanied him into Awia, fighting continued in the Pentadrica. The Pentadrica collapsed completely in the year 415.

  The intensity of the skirmishes seems far-fetched to our imagination, but it is important to remember that in and around the fifth century all the land was owned by individuals dependent upon it for their survival. The pre-Senate times were indeed difficult. A further reason why the settlers founded a senate was simple horror at the fact that all this confusion resulted from the death of one woman, the beautiful Alyss.

  To bring peace, San divided up the Pentadrica. From being the center of the Fivelands, its territories were distributed between Awia, the Plainslands and the new republic of Morenzia. Those three expanded countries were united and hostilities ceased. San proposed to lead volunteers from them against the Insects. In return, the several leaders met in Alyss’s empty palace and agreed to bequeath the building to San and proclaim him Emperor.

  Now we come to the most exciting part of Capelin’s record. From all countries came a host of people who were appalled by the thought of one man, however wise, holding sway over the world. They met at the coast and numbered about one thousand. Awian refugees collaborated readily with men and women loyal to the Pentadrica who could not accept being subjected to the rule of savage horsemen and the greedy nobles who had so recently ravaged their land. They agreed to leave for an island well known to the Pentadricans. Under cover of the summer night, they escaped the mainland in a flotilla of galleys.

  Today, if one strolls along the sandy bank of the Olio, it takes little imagination to envisage the travel-scarred galleys rowing upriver, their single square sails hanging stained and torn from the tribulations of the long crossing. Indeed, the site of the
ir landing is numinous and sacrosanct, as if after their long voyage the ghosts of those tired but eager fugitives still frequent the beach.

  Their outstanding achievements in founding the Senate and the colony of Capharnaum brought us to where we are today. Under the wisdom of a senatorial government, the colony thrived. Capharnaum grew rapidly and in the following century was embellished to its present radiance which, with the particulars of the naissance of Farrago community, will be the subject of my next chapter.

  I turned the page, and almost dropped the book in astonishment. There was a portrait of the Emperor San. I recognized him instantly in the full-page illustration, although he was not in the Throne Room, seated on his dais in front of the electrum sunburst. He was sitting on a rock, and he wore breeches. A black and white cloak around his shoulders was secured with annular brooches. Across his knees, his ridged and wiry hands held a boar spear. The backdrop was a verdant plain of fields and, dotted into the distance, towns that were tiny collections of beautiful domes and stepped-gable houses. They reminded me of the broken domes of old Awia that project from the Paperlands; Awia has not built domes for nearly two thousand years. When Insects forced their country southward, Awians deliberately changed the style of their architecture to symbolize a new start and express their defiance.

  San did not look stern and forbidding. He was smiling. He looked like a fyrd captain; he looked like one of us. The caption read: San, from Haclyth village, proclaimed Emperor in 415 on the dissolution of the Pentadrica.