The Cataclysm

by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman

  Report Number Four

  Same day (Cotterpin says the 13th), late afternoon

  Hi, Astinus. I'm a few miles outside of town now, sitting under a tree, where no one except Cotterpin can find me, I hope. This is probably my last official report to you, because there doesn't seem to be much point in continuing to try to find someone who understands why the gods got so tired of Istar, when everyone gets so upset about the whole issue and thinks either that Istar was wonderful or that Istar was bad but wasn't as bad as some other places around here that should have gotten hit with their own fiery mountains first.

  My stomach hurts but I'm not hungry, and I feel just awful, like I'm going to have a good cry in a minute after I finish writing this all down, even if Ark says boys shouldn't cry, but I'm a kender and not a human so maybe it's okay if I feel bad for just a little while.

  Everyone hates me, and I hate me, and I hate being a recorder, and I hate sitting out here on a rock in the wilderness because I have no one to talk to except for Cotterpin, the tinker gnome, but he's already gone to sleep in his steam-powered lawn chair under the oak tree here. Ark is going to be very disappointed that I got thrown in jail and made part of the town burn up and started a riot and everything. I'll write down how I got here, but I don't care if it's interesting or important anymore.

  After Magistrate Jarvis caught Goodwife Filster on the tavern roof and wrestled with her and they both almost fell off and he took her butcher's cleaver away and made her get down the ladder again and leave me alone, he said it would be best if I left town for a while.

  "How long is 'for a while'?" I asked, and he said, "Until Goodie Filster leaves town, that's how long. Maybe it would be even better if you were gone for good. Permanently. Forever."

  We climbed down from the roof of the Cats amp; Kitties, and he took me by the arm and ran me back to his office. I could hear people fighting in town all the way there, and I wondered how they could keep it up for so long and wouldn't they be tired of it all by now, but obviously they weren't yet.

  Jarvis kept me inside his office long enough to give me a blanket, a bag of bread rolls with no sugar, some cheese, and a skin he said was full of water but which was really only half full of ale, which I hate and have already poured out. Then he said, "Just get out of here. It's for your own good as well as everyone else's. You can't stay here any longer until Goodie Filster's out of here."

  And I said, "Where can I go?" And he said, "Gods, you idiot, anywhere! Just get out of this town. She'll kill you if she sees you here!" And I said, "But what about Ark? Can't I go see Ark?" Then Jarvis called me a name that means my head looks like my backside and told me to leave, so I left.

  I walked and walked until I was past the Dormens' farm, which was as far as I'd ever gone away from town in my whole life, and then I went around a hill I always used to look at when I was small but had never visited, and I looked back one last time at the town and felt like part of my insides had fallen out and been left behind, and I missed Ark terribly but didn't know if I could ever go back, because things were in such a mess.

  There was smoke drifting over the town near the waterfront, but I couldn't see if it was from Goodwife Filster's bakery or someone else's place that was burning up. I turned around and walked on down the road, scuffing my feet in the dust and kicking rocks and holding my blanket and wishing I was dead.

  I thought of you, Astinus, and Ark, and I was ashamed because I had promised to do my best to find out if anyone understood the Cataclysm, but I had done it all wrong and now I would never get to be a real scribe, much less an amanuensis. Even worse, I was afraid that because I couldn't find out the answer to the question, then something would go wrong someday and no one would know what to do about it and it would be all my fault.

  But even this was not as bad as missing Ark, because Ark is my father, even if he isn't my real father, because he took care of me when no one else would, and I knew he would be upset with me, and I missed him so much that I just couldn't feel anything at all. I was empty inside and knew I would be empty forever. I wasn't even hungry anymore.

  I walked a long time, but I didn't walk very fast. Part of me wanted to keep on walking forever, but I got so numb and tired that I found a rock under an oak tree by the road and dropped my blanket and satchel and just sat down and didn't move at all. I must have sat there a long time before I noticed that a donkey cart had stopped in front of me and the driver had come over and was asking me something. The driver was shorter than I am and had wrinkled leathery skin and a snow-white beard and eyes like the deep sky. He wore a red and brown outfit covered with belts and pockets and tools. It was Cotterpin, the tinker gnome.

  Cotterpin has been visiting all the villages in a huge circle around the coast of northern Ergoth for years, and everyone knows him. When I was small, he let me play with some of the toys he had in his cart, and he was always careful to take most of them back from me so other kids could play with them in other towns, but he always left some toys behind. I think now that he did it on purpose, but I used to think he was just forgetful.

  "Obviously a newly generated social outcast," he was saying to me as I sat under the oak tree. "Sociological tragedy of the first magnitude. Disgraceful phenomenon."

  I just looked at him, then looked at the dirt at my feet as I had been doing for however long I'd been there. I thought for a moment that I should ask him the question you wanted Ark to ask, but I didn't want to ask anyone that question ever again. I knew if I asked him, he would hate me like everyone else hated me, and I just couldn't stand that.

  Cotterpin went back to his cart and heaved something out of the back, then began to set up something beside my rock that looked like a box with a metal plate on it and a switch on one end, with red gnomish lettering all over it that I couldn't read. He fiddled with the box for a bit, then went back to the cart and got a clay mug from it and filled it with liquid from a tap on the side of his cart, then set it on the box and flipped the switch. I knew I should run or hide or shield my face when he did that, as everyone knows that gnome-built things can make craters as big as the one Istar now rests in, but I didn't feel like running, and I thought maybe it would be best if I blew up with the box.

  But the box didn't blow up; it just got warm after a while and the tea in the mug got warm, too. I was trying to figure that one out while Cotterpin went back to the cart and brought back a steam-powered folding chair that also failed to blow up and which he set up next to me under the tree so he could relax in it and enjoy the same warm setting sun that I was not enjoying.

  "A pleasant respite it is to renew our long acquaintance, Walnut Arskin," he said in his same old deep but nasal voice, "though I suffer some concern about the circumstances. Perhaps you would care to elaborate on your condition."

  I thought about it and finally said, "No."

  "Mmm." Cotterpin took a sip of his tea, then held the mug in his short, thick fingers and swirled the contents. "I am not unaccustomed to seeing wayfarers as youthful as yourself fall victim to any number of unfortunate mishaps in the undisciplined confines of the wilderness. Being moderately fond of our visits together in the recent past, I was hoping to hear some motive or rationale for your presence here before you, too, encounter any of the aforementioned mishaps. Are you perhaps running away from home?"

  "No," I said, and then I said, "Yes," and then I said, "No. Maybe. I don't know."

  "Mmm." Cotterpin took another sip of his tea and looked off at the sun, which was just above the hill that hides New-shore from view. He didn't say anything more for a long time, and before I knew it I had told him everything, even the part about the question that you wanted Ark to answer (but I didn't tell him about the facts machine).

  "Mmm," he said when I was done. "I see." Cotterpin was quiet for a while, and we looked at the open fields around us and watched deer graze and a hawk hunt for rabbits. The wind was getting a little cooler, but it was still okay to be out.

  "It seems like an eon ago t
hat I dwelled in Istar," said Cotterpin at last, watching the hawk with a peaceful face. "Yet even now I remember it far better than I would like. In the twilight years of that sea-buried land, I labored as a menial slave, the chattel of a priest. I had arrived there but scant decades before as a fully accredited diplomat from my homeland — the extinct geothermal vent called Mount Nevermind by the knights. Unfettered I was at first, able to commune with priest and commoner alike in that proud city, until the Istarians manifested great annoyance with my fellow diplomats and me over the failure of one of our gifts of technology. We had directed the construction of a new mode of urban transport, a steam-powered cart that traveled over fixed rails, but on its trial run it caused considerable damage to some important buildings in the capital. I was put on trial and sentenced to enforced servitude for the remainder of my life, as were my fellow diplomats, whom I never saw again.

  "My overseer, whose glacial visage I shall bear with me to my grave, brought me along on an inspection tour of a distant military encampment just before catastrophe overtook Istar. In the anarchy and discord that followed, I was able to effect my escape and leave my overseer and his retainers to their own fate, which could not have been pleasant given the multitude of ills that plagued the region at that time. I journeyed westward on foot, feasting on the meager bounty of nature like an untamed beast, until I found a bare remnant of civilization in old Solamnia. There, among bitter-eyed men who cursed the gods and slew one another over trifles, I labored until I had saved enough steel to cross the new sea to Hylo, on this island's eastern shore. I then purchased a cart and a donkey — dear old Axle, whom you see now — and took up my most recent and probably final vocation as a tinker. As such, I am now content with my lot and desire nothing more."

  "Did you ever want to go home to Mount Nevermind?" I asked. I had forgotten all about my problems and was trying to imagine what it would be like to walk across the whole continent, from Istar to northern Ergoth. I couldn't imagine it. I was also thinking about Ark and wishing that I could go home myself.

  "Mmm," Cotterpin mumbled. "The thought has made its disquieting presence known to me on occasion, but I take thorough comfort in the realization that Mount Nevermind will continue to exist regardless of my actual physical location. I have determined that my best course is to find my own footway in the world and meanwhile examine the long-range consequences of the catastrophe that the gods visited upon Istar. I have been content with my work since then and have not regretted a moment of it. My original life quest was to have something to do with mass transit, but given the results of my development of the prototypical urban travel system in Istar, for which I was enslaved, I decided that another form of life-quest expression was called for. I also fear that I've been much contaminated socially by my contact with humans, and I am concerned that my brethren at Mount Nevermind might find my speech and mannerisms peculiar and would perhaps ask me to volunteer for psychiatric research, which at this time I am minded to avoid. No, I'd rather not voyage to fair Mount Nevermind again. I am an itinerant vagabond, happy at last, and wish to remain so to the end of my vagabond days."

  We sat there for a while longer, and Cotterpin sighed. "Would that I could render some comfort to you, Walnut," he said, "but I wonder if perhaps your father, Jeraim, might give you more comfort than I, and if perhaps a visit with him might not reassure him that you have not fallen victim to tragedy. You have taken up a dreadful and thankless assignment. It might be time to recuperate from your excursion and renew your personal energies."

  Cotterpin yawned and set aside his mug. "Tea always has a soporific effect on my psychomotor system," he said, his words slurring a bit. "The local angle of solar radiation is also inducing drowsiness, and if you would be so generous as to excuse my lapse, I would like to take a brief moment to relax my… to relax my eyelids." He closed his eyes, and, only two heartbeats later, he began to snore.

  I looked at the countryside for a while more, then took out my paper and pen and wrote all of this down. The sun is about to sink behind the hill, and I can hear crickets chirp ing and birds singing, and I can still see a deer across the field, near some trees.

  I stopped after I wrote the last paragraph above and thought for a while like Ark told me to do. I don't feel as upset as I did when I started to write down this report. I've just put my blanket over Cotterpin and left my bag of food with him after I ate some of it, and I've made sure that Axle has enough grass where she is standing, off to the side of the road. I am taking my papers and pen and facts machine, and I am going back to see Ark. I might have something to write to you about later, but if not, then it won't matter.

  Report Number Five

  Same day, after midnight, I think

  Hi, Astinus! Its really late, I know, but I had to get one last report to you about how everything went. Ark doesn't know that I'm up or that I found out where he hid the facts machine after I gave it back to him and he ordered me never to touch it again or else I'd go to jail for a year, so don't tell him, please. He and Widow Muffin are asleep right now, and I don't think they could wake up for anything, and I'd rather not wake them up anyway. It's been a busy evening.

  I went back into town right at sundown and went home to the shop, though part way there I slowed down a lot and was worried about what Ark would do when he found that I had his facts machine and had burned down the town and all, even if the last part was an accident. I felt bad, too, because I had failed to find out everything I think you wanted and Ark would be angry and disappointed in me, and I was also rather mortified that Ark might find out that I read Widow Muffin's letters, but I didn't read them all, just the first twelve.

  The town was quiet again, though I could smell some smoke, and I saw candles burning in the window at the back of the shop where I usually go in. As I got closer, I saw that the back door was open, and I could hear voices inside the shop. The light inside was flickering, and at first I thought it was the stove. As I got even closer, I could tell that one of the voices was Ark's and one was Widow Muffin's, and I almost stopped, but I kept going anyway, even if my face was red.

  It was when I got even closer still, almost up to the doorway, that I could hear a third voice in the shop, and that voice was Goodwife Filster's.

  I stopped right then, holding the satchel and not moving a muscle. Goodwife Filster was saying something in a loud voice, growling like the Wylmeens' mastiff when he catches scent of me walking through the garden that he thinks is his territory. After a moment, I edged up to the door on one side, so no one could see me, and I listened to them talk, though Ark had once told me to never spy on anyone, and I never have, except just then and maybe two other times.

  "You have to be reasonable about this," Ark was saying. His voice was a little too high and tight. "If you could just listen to me for a minute and think about — "

  "Shut your dung-eating trap," shouted Goodwife Filster. "You brought that wicked little monster into this good town, and look at me now! My bakery's burned down, and I've got nothing left to my name except the clothes on my back. My whole life has been a sewage pit ever since blessed Istar died, and it's all because of vermin like that kender and maggot-brained asses like yourself who feed and clothe them! You're to blame for this even more than he is. You brought him among us, and you blinded everyone to his evil nature. You let him work his evil on us, and now he's had his way, and good people like myself are destroyed! I'm ruined!" And then she called Ark some names that I'm not going to write down here, because they were awful and I don't think I could spell them correctly anyway. I might ask Ark about them tomorrow.

  When Goodwife Filster stopped for breath, I heard Widow Muffin say, "Goodie Filster, please, listen to us. You need to go back to the inn and rest for a while. If you do anything to hurt us, you'll feel terrible about it. You've had some terrible things happen to — "

  "Shut up!"

  The wall I was leaning against vibrated when Goodwife Filster yelled, and among other things she called Wido
w Muffin a prostitute, only she didn't use that word.

  "You can't talk to me!" Goodwife Filster finished. "You have no right to say anything to me! You deserve the same fate that the kender should have had years ago! He should have died out there, eaten by rats and wolves. It's your fault, Arskin, for dragging that demon child in among good folk."

  "He's not a demon," Ark said, his voice shaky. "You're just upset, now. He's a kender, and they're just like you and me, even if they cause a little more — "

  "The Abyss take you!" screamed Goodwife Filster. "The evil gods delivered him into your hands to destroy us!"

  "Goodie, he was just a little baby, and his mother was dead. She'd been wounded by goblins or bandits, and she'd carried him all the way through the wilderness to get him to safety. I couldn't leave him there after I buried her. If you had been me, you would have done the same. You know it!" Ark sounded like he was trying to reason with a swamp viper he'd almost stepped on.

  I was shocked to hear about my mother, because Ark had never said a word to me about her, and for a moment I couldn't think of anything else until Goodwife Filster laughed.