“Have Rayo stopped at Torres!”
Two signalmen worked in the box; small men but with a proud, upright bearing and a reputation for belligerence. As El Tigre entered, one had been watching the signal from Torres and transcribing it into charcoal symbols on a tablet. The other was working vigorously at the signal arms which projected downwards into the middle of the cabin, acknowledging the message and adding comments of his own. On the roof, a big battery of hemitrexes caught the sun and flashed the reply back down the coast.
The signalmen stopped work, staring at El Tigre in anger. Theirs was an exclusive guild, their codes were secret and the boxes sacrosanct. Even the Palace Guards never climbed the ladder. And now, here was this brutish man issuing orders.
“Get out! This is private property! Out! Out!” They shuffled towards him with mincing steps and peremptory gestures.
El Tigre stood his ground. “Send a message, now! Get that goddamned car stopped and have the felinos hold Captain Tonio at Torres North Stage!”
“Out! Out! Messages must be presented in the proper manner through the agent! Out!” They stood before him, small men barely reaching his shoulder, heads jerking with the violence of their speech. They pushed him in the chest; short-arm shoves of some force.
With a roar of rage El Tigre seized them and slammed them together. They staggered, blinking rapidly, then came back with whirling arms. One of them caught him a chopping blow across the neck and El Tigre took hold of them again, pinioning them.
“Listen to me,” he growled. “Something’s happened which threatens the whole future of Specialists on the coast — and that includes you. We have to act quickly. If we let Tonio get away with this, it will show the True Humans that Specialists can’t cooperate even when our livelihood is threatened. We might as well take a long walk into the mountains! Do you understand me? Now send that message!”
“That can’t be done,” snapped one of the men. “The Guild rules are designed to cover all circumstances and no man, not even a felino, tells the Guild what to do. We’re not frightened of you. You can’t harm the Guild!”
The little man stared fiercely up at him and El Tigre knew he spoke the truth. Everybody knew signalmen were different from other people. Their society was like a hive. Individuals would willingly sacrifice themselves to preserve the integrity of the whole: the gestalt they called the Guild. And the Guild covered the whole coast, extending further than the sailways. The communication network was essential to the life of True Human and Specialist alike — and it was too big an organization for El Tigre to take on.
“We cannot bend the rules,” said the little man. “You must see the agent.”
And the two of them became suddenly still, watching him.
Mordecai! thought El Tigre. They’re waiting for me to kill them!
He turned and descended the ladder rapidly, jumping the last few meters to the ground, landing lightly on all fours. Then he began to run back to North Stage, moving with that bounding felino gait which covers the ground at deceptive speed.
There was no point in seeing the Guild agent. He was another fierce little man who went by the book and would undoubtedly refuse to send the message on the grounds that felinos had no authority over sailway captains and that such an instruction would make the Guild party to an illegal act.
So El Tigre followed the sailway back to North Stage, where a large crowd of felinos was being whipped into a frenzy by the sly words of Manoso, stage managed by Dozo. There were no True Humans in sight. The other Specialists, feeling it was not their problem, stood aloof. Fools, thought El Tigre.
“I’ll speak to them now,” he said to Dozo.
“Better not. Manoso’s doing fine. This is a time for exaggeration and deceit, El Tigre. A time for politics. One of your talks on brotherhood and rights would bore the hell out of them. They want blood.”
Arrojo added, “We’re going to catch that bastard Tonio and string him up!”
“How are we going to catch him?”
“We’ll get after him, right now!” Arrojo’s eyes were alight with anticipation. “We’ll follow him to the ends of the Earth, if needs be!”
“There are larger issues.” El Tigre visualized all the best felinos galloping to Patagonia, leaving the camp unguarded. His fury had abated now, and he was able to consider the situation more calmly. There was much planning to be done. Instead of chasing wildly after Tonio, they should call a Council meeting and decide on they tactics. The long-promised revolution was at hand.…
“And now we hear rumors that the evil Fire-god Agni himself had a hand in the building of this machine!” Manoso was telling the crowd. “Well, friends, I think that Tonio has suggested his own retribution. We will tie him to his own poopdeck and kindle the Wrath of Agni beneath his accursed sailcar, and he and his machine will perish together!”
“But what about the next machine, and the next Tonio?” El Tigre asked Dozo.
Arrojo broke in. “Is the great warrior preaching caution? What’s happened to your talk of war, El Tigre?”
“I am talking of war, you damned fool. I’m saying we shouldn’t waste time running after one man. I’m saying we should get home and hold a meeting.”
“A meeting?” Arrojo regarded him incredulously.
“El Tigre!” It was one of the signalmen. People regarded him in astonishment. Members of the Guild were rarely seen in felino camps even though their families might make an exception on Festival day.
“Yes?” El Tigre stepped forward irritably. The reminder of the frustration in the signal cabin added to the fires of his annoyance. “If you have a message for me, you’d better pass it through your agent. Guild rules, you know.”
“Listen to me, El Tigre. There’s been an accident at Torres involving Rayo, and —”
“Rayo is stopped there?” Arrojo uttered a yell of triumph.
“Yes, but —” The little signalman was still regarding El Tigre.
“We’ve got him!” shouted Arrojo. “By Agni, we’ve got him! To the mules, men!”
“What is it, signalman?” asked El Tigre quietly. His heart was pounding. There was something in the little man’s eyes. They had lost their fierceness, and watched him with a new expression.
“One of your daughters, El Tigre. One of your daughters was … involved.”
Now Arrojo was quiet, and so was the rest of the crowd. They edged closer, sensing tragedy.
“Involved? How? Which daughter?” El Tigre towered over the man, fingers hooked as though to tear the details bodily from him.
“I don’t know which — the signal only spoke of the grupo. But.…” The little signalman looked away, regarding the mountains almost wistfully, as though he’d rather have been there. “They say she died, El Tigre.”
The sound El Tigre made was, wordless. He turned away, snatching reins from Arrojo, jumped into the saddle and flogged his mount into a gallop. After a moment’s shocked hesitation, others began to climb onto mules and ride after him.
Dozo watched them go. “So much for the reasoned tactics of our leader,” he said quietly to himself.
The death of Haleka.
The Song of Earth makes little mention of the tump. It is not a flamboyant animal. It does not capture the imagination of the listener in the way that the kikihuahua space bats do, with their thousand-kilometer wingspan; or the beacon hydras whose roots have been known to permeate an entire planet and throw it into a new orbit. No, the tump is a dull lump of meat. On the happentrack of our story it is doomed — although, as you will hear, there are happentracks on which the tump thrived and multiplied.
One couplet only describes the tump:
“Across the hills of Old Brasil the landwhales eat their way.
Their herds are ever-dwindling, their future in decay.”
Not exactly a song of hope. The tumpier Haleka was not even mentioned — on this happentrack.
Haleka’s life’s purpose was ended. The tump had halted at the beach for a sh
ort rest before its death plunge. Haleka sat astride, prepared to die with his mount. The sun was sinking behind him, and the tump cast a huge shadow across the sand left wet by the outflowing tide. Haleka looked to the south, and saw in the distance another vast form. It might have been a big rock, but it could have been another tump in a similar predicament.
And on another happentrack, it was.
Haleka didn’t investigate. He had no curiosity, no interest. In the last few minutes left to him, his mind slipped into the past. The image of a beautiful, tawny-eyed girl faded for a moment, and childhood memories began to soothe him. He remembered his early life in the Women’s Village; his mother, and a sister named Andra. The Women had taught him gentleness, patience and philosophy, preparing him for his youth as an apprentice. Those had been quiet years, for the Women’s Village was a fortified kraal in the jungle where adult males came only occasionally, where tall fencing kept out all animals except monkeys, where the jungle outside the fence was guarded fiercely by Bachelors — men who had not qualified as apprentices and so would never become tumpiers.
Even the felina grupos left the Women’s Village alone.
In later years, when Haleka succeded to his father’s tump, he visited the Women’s Village a number of times. It looked the same as he remembered it, but now he had changed himself. He came driven by emotions he hadn’t known as a child, and as a result the Women’s Village held a new and urgent significance. The Madre — the elderly head of the Village — recognized this when Haleka appeared narrow-eyed and panting outside the fence, having defeated the strongest bachelor in bloodless wrestling. She let him in.
They were times of fierce delight, those visits to the Women’s Village, and the bright memory stayed with Haleka always, sometimes coloring his dreams on tumpback. He visited a number of times over a period of two years until, one day, the Madre met him at the gate and said, “Enough.”
The bachelors carried him away, struggling.
Back on the tump, he knew this rejection meant one of two things: either he had sired enough children to sustain the Village balance, or the Madre suspected that an emotional relationship had developed between him and one of the Women. This had been known to happen, even though the Madre always ensured that the Men lay with a different Woman on each occasion.
And Haleka did have a guilty memory of one Woman who had held him afterwards, and stroked him in a quite unnecessary way while he murmured things to her instead of leaving.
Years later, they had brought him the boy they called his son, so he was at last able to forget the Woman. Seasons of peace followed while he taught the boy, and when Mauo, as he was named, was apprenticed to a tumpier over Torres way, it was the proudest day of Haleka’s life.
Just one thing disturbed him.
Mauo, before he departed, said hesitantly, “There’s a girl — she’d be a Woman, now. My half-sister. Your daughter, Haleka. I often think of her.”
Of course the Madre hadn’t told Haleka about the daughter; why should she? It was no business of his.…
And as Haleka sat on his tump waiting for the moments of dying, the phantom face of this unknown girl took on substance, forming in his mind as a clear vision of beauty — a girl with eyes that looked into his soul, with hair like the Wrath of Agni.
“Oh, Karina!” he shouted to the sea. “Why did you leave me?”
Behind him, the swiftest sailcar ever built fled southwards, her sails like transparent membranes against the late sun.
The tump began to move again.
The glory of Haleka.
As we know, all of Time is composed of diverging happentracks. Starquin used this quality to direct events towards the fulfilment of his Purpose. He concentrated on favorable happentracks, but even he could not prevent unwanted happentracks from branching off into the Ifalong — because they were part of an even greater scenario than his Purpose.
Through an odd quirk of the Ifalong, some of these happentracks found their way into the memory vaults of the Rainbow on our happentrack, in the here and now, and on this hillside.
Listen:
“Why do I have to hurt someone I like?” Karina said. “You made me run out on that poor little man Siervo, and he died. Now you want me to run out on Haleka. What will happen to him?”
“He will die.”
“And if I stay with him?”
“He will live a few years longer. Just a few years, Karina. It’s nothing compared to the sweep of the Ifalong.”
“But it’s a hell of a lot to Haleka!”
“You gave your word, Karina,” said the handmaiden.
Karina gazed down towards the ocean, where the slumped silhouette of Haleka could be seen atop his doomed tump. “Well, I’m breaking it. I’m staying with Haleka. To hell with Starquin and his Purpose and the Dedo and the whole rotten lot of you. You’re only interested in yourselves and you don’t give a damn for anyone else!”
For once, the handmaiden lost her serenity. “Karina, my child. The Purpose of Starquin is the most important thing on Earth.”
“Not to me it isn’t. Right now, the most important thing to me, is that I go and look after Haleka, because if I don’t I think he’ll drown himself.” Her eyes were blazing as she uttered the traditional felino disclaimer. “So piss on Starquin!”
“As you will.”
“What? You mean you don’t care?” The handmaiden’s sudden indifference nonplussed Karina.
“It’s of no significance now, because on another happentrack you have obeyed my wishes. Happentracks are infinite, Karina.”
“Damn you! And damn that other me!”
“The other Karina will become famous. But you will not, and you will never see me again.”
“See if I care,” said Karina, turning her back on the tall woman and walking away.
“So Mauo told me he had a sister — my daughter. I never saw her, but I often think about her. I think she might have been something like you, Karina.…”
Haleka’s voice droned softly on, telling of his childhood while Karina sat facing him on the broad back of the tump. They were boring, these endless pointless yarns, but they were better than suicide, thought Karina. Haleka had to talk things out.
“Look!” she said suddenly. “There’s a car — that must be Rayo! What’s wrong with her?”
The swiftest sailcar ever built limped southwards, her sails like transparent membranes against the late sun. The mainmast had broken and the car had been crudely jury-rigged, the two pieces of the mast splinted together with a crimson liana, the sail hanging crooked like a broken wing.
“So she wasn’t so fast after all,” said Karina. “After all that trouble and secrecy, she’s slower than any of the others.”
“Speed is the enemy of man,” said Hakela. “This is one of the first lessons a boy learns in the Women’s Village. I recall one day the Madre —”
“What are your plans, Haleka?”
“My work is done. As the Madre once said —”
“I think we should build a boat, you and I. We should sail off east to the Magic Islands, where women live in grass castles and men ride whales, so the legends go. Wouldn’t that be fun? We could build a castle and send for my sisters, and we could all live there, forever.”
“What would we eat?” asked Haleka tolerantly.
“We’d catch fish, of course, like the Magic Island people do.”
“Eat flesh? Me? Never!” said Haleka, whose ancestors came from the floating islands of Polysitia themselves, if he did but know it.
The tump began to move again, heaving itself towards the water, and Karina’s heart missed a beat. “Look!” she cried desperately. “There’s another tump further down the beach. I think our tump looked at it. Maybe it’s a girl tump!”
“Tumps have no sex, Karina. That’s the whole problem. That’s why they’re dying out.”
“How do you know they have no sex? Have you ever looked?” Karina warmed to her theme. “Can you honestly tell me a
nyone’s ever rolled a tump over and looked?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Karina.”
“Well, then!” The tump had reached the water’s edge. Karina and Haleka still faced each other. Haleka watched the sea, Karina the land.
Haleka said, “The very fact that a tump can’t roll over ought to tell you it can’t mate.” The conversation was becoming distasteful to him. Tumpier culture dictated that Men ceased thinking about sex once their reproductive duties were done, and much of the childhood teaching was conditioned to this end. “It wouldn’t be able.… It couldn’t.… Even if it had.…”
“It couldn’t bring its organs to bear,” said Karina with relish. Then, with the subject seemingly at an end, the sadness rolled back like a sea fog. “Are you really going to kill yourself, Haleka?”
“That is the way.”
“I’m not going to let you — you know that? I’m going to fight you and drag you back, and the whole thing will become ridiculous. You know I’m stronger than you.”
“Please let me die with dignity, Karina.”
“No way.” She took his hands in hers. The tump was in the water now, and a wave touched her feet. She kicked at the water, hating it.
“Karina! Please don’t take this away from me!”
The tump was buoyant, rocking beneath them in the light swell. Karina held Haleka firmly around the wrists. His eyes were shut. Tears of shame started from under the lids. Karina blinked, wondering if she was doing the right thing. Haleka wanted to die, but she wouldn’t let him because.… Because she was just as selfish as the Dedo and the handmaiden and lousy Starquin.
“All right, Haleka,” she said quietly. “Goodbye, now. I love you.” And she kissed him on the cheek.
She slipped from the tump’s back and began to swim alongside, unwilling to head for the shore just yet. Looking around, she saw the other tump was closer now, a low mound showing above the water with a tumpier sitting on top, shoulders drooping. Haleka’s tump rocked, nearly unseating him. The bulky animal was not nearly so stable in the water as on land, and Karina moved away a couple of meters, fearing a capsize.
Cat Karina Page 16