New Writings in SF 23 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  ‘Avert your eyes!’ the sacerdote’s thin voice, almost lost in the roar of the wind, screamed a warning. ‘Remember the law of the plateau, girl. It is madness to look beyond the world!’

  Minona responded unthinkingly, years of conditioning forcing her mind to accept the sacerdote’s demands. She dropped into a half-crouch, staring blankly at the mossy stones beneath her feet, thankful to reduce the awful pressure of the wind on her body.

  Thinking was now almost impossible. Her mind was in a turmoil. Through half-closed eyes she watched in helpless fascination as the villagers, forbidden to approach the edge, thrust long spears in Mrogre’s direction, bone tips quivering in the wind and the dawn light.

  The mists were rising now, dense white clouds writhing upwards on the air currents, spilling over the edge of the plateau to be caught and shredded by the ceaseless winds.

  Mrogre turned to face the half-circle of spears, his face oddly blank, not twisted with the fear and pain Minona had been dreading. Oh, if only he would look at her! But he seemed oblivious to her presence. For one panic-filled moment Minona thought that the spearmen were going to force Mrogre backwards over the edge. But Taltos the sacerdote was moving among them, shouting instructions in their ears.

  If only she could do something! Minona had never felt so helpless in her life. Yet for both their sakes she must not intervene. Whatever happened she had to stay alive. That was what Mrogre wanted.

  Now the spear tips touched his body, drawing the skin taut, the men watching for any excuse to plunge the bone barbs into his defenceless flesh. Thongs were produced and thankfully Minona realised that Mrogre was to live, at least for a while longer. She gasped, sagging with relief as the strength left her limbs. Had she not been kneeling, Minona would have collapsed.

  Impassive, Mrogre allowed them to secure his tortured limbs. Those chosen by Taltos to fasten the cords carried out the task with obvious distaste, unwilling to come into contact with his tainted flesh. Only when Mrogre was tightly bound and dragged away from the edge, did Taltos approach. Minona saw with horror that the sacerdote carried a long symbol-worked blade. The girl shuddered, trying to prevent a scream, hatred for the sacerdote and concern for Mrogre twisting her senses. As Taltos raised the knife, Minona slumped over in a half-faint, the roar of blood in her ears almost drowning Mrogre’s single scream of agony.

  When the world steadied and consciousness returned it was all over. Excruciating spasms wracked Mrogre’s body. He pawed futilely with bound hands at his blood-filled mouth, strange animal gaspings escaping his throat. With sick despair Minona realised that Taltos had cut Mrogre’s tongue out. The sacerdote could allow no word of what lay beyond the edge to reach the village. Despite the danger, the girl was unable to contain a moan of pity. At the sound of it, Taltos looked towards her. He approached, curious, his thin awkward body bent double against the wind, and the expression on his face made her shiver.

  ‘Why did you leave the village, Minona? What impatience overcame your womanly reserve?’ The sacerdote’s words were like ice in the girl’s heart. How wrong she had been to let emotion override her senses. The sacerdote’s eyes were hard and unwinking. Minona cowered away from his intense gaze.

  ‘Perhaps you came to see how obscenity is punished?’ he whispered, his face inches from hers. ‘Do not shudder child, I shall see that this blasphemy does not offend your eyes much longer.’ Taltos turned to the spearmen, screaming his commands. ‘Take this that was once like us to the village. Hide it away from the sight of men until I decide how best to put an end to its wretched existence.’

  * * * *

  Minona stumbled back to the village in a daze. Confused and dispirited, she reached the collection of huts just after midday, and was immediately set upon by several of the older women, who accused her of attempting to avoid her duties. Minona was in no mood to argue with them. Her only thoughts were for Mrogre and how she might possibly be able to help him. Deadly tired, she endured the heavy hands and vicious tongues without complaint, performing her work in a listless fashion which brought more rebuke. Minona couldn’t tell if any of them knew of her night-time wanderings in the forest, of actually reaching the edge, but she was conscious of their stares whenever she turned her back on them, and several times she caught whispered conversations about her association with Mrogre.

  Towards dusk, when her tasks were finished, Minona was grudgingly given food and goat’s milk and allowed to return to her hut. She saw no sign of Mrogre or Taltos on her walk across the village, but she did notice the piles of brushwood heaped upon the open space before the altar. She gazed with a sick feeling at the brushwood, realising that Taltos intended Mrogre should burn before the whole village. What better warning could be given that none who deviated from perfection should be allowed to live? The law insisted that Mrogre, even though he had only recently developed his affliction, should be destroyed. Minona knew that. Once she would have accepted it without a second thought. But how could Taltos justify such a dreadful death?

  The girl broke into a clumsy run, tears springing afresh from red eyes where she had imagined no tears were left. In the quiet darkness of her hut she eventually cried herself into an uneasy slumber.

  Minona dreamed strange dreams that night. It seemed as if on several occasions before the dawn, Mrogre stood close by her in the hut, looking down, not at her but at some unimaginable place of which she knew nothing. At such moments the air in the little hut swirled and rushed frenziedly as though disturbed by great winds. And with the rushing air came strange and distant voices. Mrogre stood quietly in the midst of all this confusion and the expression on his face caused the girl to whimper in her sleep.

  When the first hint of daylight crept across the plateau, Minona left her bed feeling hot and unrested. She stood for a moment in the doorway, staring at the myriad points of light glittering in the greyness overhead, wondering what, if anything, her inexplicable dream had meant.

  Out of the half-light came the booming of the great land-toads. Minona shivered at those deep echoing notes. Sonal, the oldest man in the village, claimed he remembered a time when the landtoads were small hopping things no larger than a man’s hand. Now they were half as tall as a man and capable of prodigious leaps. Minona recalled Mrogre laughing that they were capable of leaping right off the plateau and back on to it. Though his mouth had smiled she had been aware that his eyes were serious.

  Standing there, in the doorway of her little hut, Minona could feel the wind tugging at her hair, watched it rippling through the long grasses. Once as a little girl she had thought deeply about the wind, wondering what would happen if she were to run naked into the forest towards the place where the winds roared. Surely without the weight of her clothes the wind would carry her off, take her far from the plateau to some undreamt-of land inhabited by strange animals? But she had been too afraid to try it. After that, whenever she had to go outside, Minona put on all the clothes she could find, filling the pockets with stones. Only then, though the unaccustomed weight tired her long before her work was finished, did Minona feel safe enough to go outside. For days she felt very guilty about carrying stones around in her pockets until accidentally she discovered that all the other children carried them too. Even the adults, though they would not admit it by carrying stones, constantly affected heavy ornaments or carried accoutrements of iron to weigh them down.

  The daylight strengthened and for the first time in her life Minona found herself dreading the dawn. Minona had been subject to the laws of the plateau from birth, accepting them without question as everyone in the village did. Gradually she had learned to reject Taltos’ teachings as evil and unnecessary. When Minona had fallen in love with Mrogre, he had displayed no sign of the great mass of flesh which now bulged between his shoulders. Yet even though the weight of that unnatural mass bowed him over and forced him to walk with a stoop, his affliction had done nothing to alter her feelings. Despite the sacerdote’s indoctrination, Minona knew that Mrogre was no
t a thing of evil, that he was still a man and should be given compassion and understanding, not treated as something less than an animal.

  Taltos preached the creed of perfection. That to allow abnormalities to flourish unchecked would mean the end of humanity on the plateau and would precipitate the emergence of a sub-species. Look how the crops yielded poorer harvests and the livestock dwindled! Each year it became increasingly harder to sustain life. There must be no lessening of standards, the sacerdote insisted, for this would only result in weakness, in extinction. So every malformed child was destroyed at birth, its body cast over the edge lest its blood contaminate the soil and the crops which sprang from the soil.

  For many years Minona had lived by this law without questioning it. Though the doubt had been there before her love for Mrogre, it had been his gentleness that hardened her conviction into certainty.

  When the villagers came to collect her, they found Minona huddled in a corner, sobbing bitterly.

  * * * *

  The sunlight was harsh after the shadows of the hut. Minona felt rough hands guiding her into the open space before the altar. There, silhouetted against the sky, Mrogre’s twisted body hung lashed tightly to a central pale. Sweat and angry weals marked his skin, and his eyes held the vacant expression associated with intense suffering. No flicker of recognition animated his face when Minona was thrust before him.

  ‘Look! Even Minona would not miss the destruction of any who threaten the purity of the race!’ The sacerdote’s voice carried a vindictive anger which had the crowd surging forward. Minona shrank away from the expressions on those hostile faces. Unmistakably they linked her with Mrogre. Minona knew there and then that she could not hope to escape their hatred.

  Taltos approached, his face a mask of religious fanaticism, ‘You are all aware of the laws of the plateau!’ he screamed at the crowd. ‘We must be kept free of all blemished flesh. None must look down into the horror beyond the world. Mrogre has committed sacrilege on both counts. Is there any reason why he should not be cleansed in the purifying flames?’

  ‘No!’ thundered the reply. ‘Burn him!’ they screamed, voices hard with animal passion.

  Minona wanted to plead with them to have mercy, to stop; but she was incapable of moving. Fear held her in a paralytic grip from which there was no escape.

  Torches blazed into life and at the sight of them the crowd seemed to go mad. Taltos was trembling with passion, his eyes glazed. ‘Burn him! Burn him!’ he cried, and instantly the spluttering brands were cast on the brushwood, the flames fanned by the gusting wind crackling and spreading rapidly.

  ‘And what of Minona?’ The sacerdote’s words carried even above the roaring flames. ‘Is she free of the stigma of Mrogre’s flesh?’

  The flames had not yet reached the figure lashed to the stake but even so the crowd was loathe to take its eyes away from its victim.

  ‘Look!’ Taltos cried, ‘See how Minona has perverted her body with the hunchback’s flesh!’ Before she could even suspect what Taltos had in mind, the sacerdote grasped her thin shift in both hands tearing it down off her shoulders. Minona stood naked before the hostile eyes of the crowd, a mere girl shivering with embarrassment and fear, her stomach swollen with the unmistakable signs of pregnancy.

  Roars of disbelief burst from the men, screams of loathing from the women. Minona carried the hunchback’s child. For her transgression against the laws of the plateau she must suffer the same fate.

  Their voices were dim echoes in Minona’s ears. Only the roaring flames and Mrogre’s agonised attempts at screams as the heat began to reach him penetrated her battered senses. She had prayed that she might be allowed to bear his child but even that possibility had been taken from her by the sacerdote’s pitiless anger.

  ‘Cast her on to the flames!’ came the outraged cry, and instantly it was taken up by the entire crowd. Taltos stood with his arms folded, his eyes blazing. Unable to resist, Minona felt strong hands grip her body, lifting her up, preparing to cast her into the inferno.

  The fire was a suffocating wall of tremendous heat. Surely, she thought dimly, the agony of death could not last long? But even before those eager hands could throw her on to the blaze, a dozen voices cried out in surprise, ‘Look at the hunchback! Look!’

  Minona, gasping in the heat, stared with streaming eyes into the flames. There, where a man died, the flesh around his hump withered and split in that tremendous heat, releasing two white shimmering veils that extended and flexed, firming for a brief instant before charring into blackness and collapsing in ruins around him.

  ‘Wing! Wings!’ Came the almost unbelieving cry, ‘Mrogre had wings!’ Under the sacerdote’s insane urgings they had destroyed more than a thing of beauty, they had destroyed a man capable of releasing them from the confines of the plateau. Now he was dead, but the dream was not yet dead with him.

  ‘Minona! Does the girl live?’ Eager faces pressed close about her, hope flaring in their eyes as the flames had flared around her lover’s body. Carefully they laid her on the smoking grass. Her skin was blackened, her hair almost singed away, and she struggled desperately for air. Water was forced between her gasping lips and she saw with a sudden terrible clarity the question that trembled on every lip but which none dare utter.

  A terrible bleakness descended upon Minona as she stared at those silent, concerned faces. Weakly she attempted to struggle to her feet, but the effort was too much. Instantly hands were there to assist her, supporting her without being bidden. From now on they would not be able to do enough for her and her child.

  The leaping flames danced in her blank eyes. Tears streaked her blackened cheeks. What other wonders had they destroyed in their fanatical refusal to see the truth, Minona wondered? Now Mrogre was dead and it seemed that all that was worth living for had ended. Racial survival meant nothing to her; for Minona the future had already been destroyed.

  Before anyone could prevent her, Minona walked into the flames. Even as the flames roared about her, a smile touched her lips. Though escape by flight had been denied the inhabitants of Apteryx, they might still escape along another evolutionary road. It seemed as if briefly the boomings of the landtoads echoed in her ears...

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  * * * *

  RAINBOW

  David S. Garnett

  Uniformed guards, whether of banks, office blocks or old people’s homes, are most often regarded as faceless beings. Science had contrived hyperspace and other-dimensional logic to care for the old folk; but when the project was interrupted Lee discovered he had to face up to the emergency, for moral decay operates behind the façade of the face.

  * * * *

  No one knew the exact time when they were cut off. The last people to leave were the half dozen administrative staff members who had to go for a conference. That was a few minutes past ten. A food delivery was due at eleven, but it was usually late.

  Several people tried to complain about the lack of electricity, but were unable to because the phones had also become inoperative. The duty portal guards did not notice the failure until past halfway through their shift. ‘Half past eleven already,’ said Lee, flicking over a page of his magazine.

  Looking towards the ten-foot diameter gate, Chris said: ‘Late again. Nothing worth eating when we get off.’

  ‘Yesterday’s leftovers,’ agreed Lee. ‘We’d better give Steve and Eugene a call. Make sure they’re awake.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Chris pressed a switch beneath the speaker mounted on the wall. He flipped it back into place, then tried another. ‘That’s odd.’

  ‘What’s odd?’ said Lee, not even looking up from his magazine.

  ‘There’s no hum. It seems broken.’

  ‘That wouldn’t surprise me. It’s the only thing that hasn’t broken yet.’

  Chris continued playing with the switches. ‘I’ll use the one in stores,’ he said after a minute.

  He was not gone long. ‘That’s bust, too. The whole works must
’ve gone kaput.’

  Lee put down what he was reading and stood up. ‘Better report this,’ he said. He tried the outside line. It was on a different circuit from the internal network, but it did not work. ‘No go,’ he told Chris. He turned the knob on the radio and tried the light switch. Neither of them came on.

  ‘Must be a power failure.’

  Like everything else the electricity was provided from outside.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Lee.

  ‘What else could it be?’

  Lee did not answer. He went to the sink, inserted the plug, and turned the single tap full on. It ran for a couple of minutes before suddenly turning into a trickle, a few drops, then nothing at all.

  ‘Chris, I think we’re in trouble. Go find the captain.’

  Chris looked uneasy. ‘Shouldn’t we wait till the others get here?’

  There were supposed to be two of them at the portal all the time, but Lee judged it no longer mattered. ‘No one’s going to try and get in,’ he said.