Red Country

by Kelso, Sylvia

  “Mm.” He was quite cheerful. “What I mean is, we thought the dam was made to water the dassyx. But that was just the underground stage. Now it’s finished the real one. It didn’t lay eggs.” The shimmer in his eyes was actually teasing. “It was broken to stop the Estarians. That’s why it was really built.”

  As I stared, the shimmer vanished. He was waiting anxiously for me to understand, to share the vision that transformed flat destruction to part of a natural progress, unbroken, right.

  I looked up at Eskan Helken’s towers, trying not just to hear but to believe. He said with quiet insistence, “What was made once can be re-made. But only if what it was made for is still here.”

  I understood then. Like the insect, the dam had not been made to endure, and paradoxically, like the insect, its death would ensure its rebirth. Unbroken, it would have been abused to destroy the land for which it was built. But now, perhaps, Hethria would survive, and those who belonged in it would rebuild the dam to fulfill its proper use.

  Zam, of course, knew I understood before I had hammered clear the thoughts. He did not bother to affirm it aloud. He just set the shell down, very gently, and vaulted back on his mare.

  “Now,” he said. “Let’s go home.” And this time as he looked at Eskan Helken, there was a profound serenity in his face.

  * * * * * *

  Next day the Estarians won their hollow victory, but we had underestimated their resources, their ingenuity, and their stubbornness. Working on minimal water rations, they set up mirror-signal relays to Everran, and water came out, first on oxcarts which established depots and leapfrogged forward to establish more, then by a chain of horsemen carrying single waterskins to supply the dassyx till the carts should arrive. Within a week water was moving along a chain of relay stations, the first dassyx had become Kastir’s front line, and a fresh stream of raiders had started down the Kemreswash itself.

  Zam said, “They know something happened to the dam.” But when I said, “Turn them back,” he shook his head.

  Hectic mirror signals brought a party of surveyors hotfoot to the dam-site. They pitched camp. Signals flew to and fro. Then a major operation began, demolition crews loading carts with Gebros blocks while a horde of carters pointed their teams down Kemreswash, and every kind of construction worker swarmed ahead.

  When I shouted, “You have to do something!” Zam shrugged. “Let him put up his dam. It will keep him happy, and it’s no use till storms come on the Helkent. Before then I’ll have knocked it down.”

  The dam went up with magical speed, being only a temporary blockage in Zam’s breach. He waited till it was all but complete, then leveled it in one bout of Axynbrarve, and when he had recovered, observed, “Let’s see how he deals with that.”

  We were perched on the pocket’s high northern wall to make the most of a non-existent wind. It was a stifling day, hot as only Hethria can be, but with an element of humidity that made the heat unbearable. I wiped my face yet again. Then I looked down the sheer, smooth bulge of flaring red rock beneath us, and asked, “Why wait till he does something? Why not do something yourself?”

  “Because,” he answered flatly, “I am not fighting a war. I am defending Hethria.”

  “If you don’t take the initiative you’ll never win.”

  “I don’t want to ‘win.’”

  “Anyone will tell you that’s the surest way to lose.”

  He turned round on the rock. “I am not fighting,” he said patiently. “I am defending. I follow Math. So I act only when I must.”

  “Well, Must in the end will boil down to fight or die!”

  “Then I shall die.”

  “Oh, be my guest! And Kastir take Hethria as well!”

  “You—” He bit it off. But the end came through clear as if he had spoken. < . . . stupid, stubborn, shrewish bitch!>

  “I am not!” I spun and screamed it at him. He had never before spoken to me like that. I had traded, I realized now, on his unfailing forbearance, his ingrained courtesy. “How dare you? I am not!!”

  He was completely stunned, and showed it. He actually stammered when he spoke.

  “I—I—you—you heard?”

  “Of course I heard, when you use mindspeech what do you expect? And if that’s what you think of me then you and your precious Hethria can die as soon as you like!”

  I plunged off the rock and shot away along the hillside, hardly able to see my way for tears, hearing him call out and ignoring it. Next time he shouted in my head.

  When I ignored that he used a Command to haul me to a stop. I was still thrashing like a webbed fly when he ran up to catch my arm, whereupon I instantly, with a venomous pleasure at finding I had the liberty, slapped his face. “How dare you? This as well! Oh, you, you—rat!”

  He stood back out of range, while the mark rose red on his cheek, eyes full of confusion, perplexity, helplessness. “I only wanted to talk to you—”

  “So you use compulsion—magic? Oh, thank you very much!”

  “Sellithar, listen—”

  “Let me go!”

  “If I do you’ll run away.”

  “Of course I will, you toad!”

  “Then how can I let you go? I only want you to listen—”

  “Well, I won’t!” At which, of course, he stood back with a look of bedevilled impotence to wait till I tired myself out.

  The instant I stood still he began again, deaf to my fresh fit of rage. “What I wanted to tell you was that I didn’t say it. In mindspeech, I mean.”

  “Of course you didn’t say it, you thought it, you vile priggish stiff-necked—” I stopped dead.

  We stared at each other, while between us sunset slowly reddened the grass. At last he said very softly, “Yes. You read my thoughts.”

  At any other time I would have been delighted, enchanted, on a higher level to share an aedric gift, on a baser one at the chance to serve him with his own sauce. But only one thing weighed with me then. “So you thought it anyway! You horrible foul-mouthed—sorcerer!”

  He actually flinched. In a cooler mood I would have felt bitter remorse. Would never have dreamt of saying it. At present I was savagely pleased to have drawn blood, and made no attempt to hide it. Indeed, I gloried in it.

  He stared at me, his face altogether shuttered. Then the restraint dissolved. He turned his back and stalked away to the cave.

  * * * * * *

  With willful malice I cooked nothing that night, and next morning was unjustifiably enraged when I woke to find the kettle on, and Zam quietly mixing flourcakes beyond the fire. I leapt up in bed. Then caught myself, gritted my teeth, and sat.

  He glanced up. With an effort at conciliation that came out as impassivity, he asked, “Would you like some tea?”

  “No, I would not.” I was positively rolling in wounded righteousness.

  He stood up, took one step, and stopped. He looked pale and tired, I noted, suppressing a twinge of remorse.

  Keeping the same careful distance he began, with a stiffness I should have known was difficulty and chose to read as dislike, “It was my fault. I should not have thought it.”

  I glowered. I never even realized how far inside his defenses I had come. Three years ago he would never have apologized, let alone put himself in the wrong.

  “I only wanted to tell you what you did. That it was remarkable, it—”

  He could not have chosen a worse epithet. I hackled all over again and cut him short.

  “Then you should have found a better way to explain.”

  “Yes. I should.” With which pusillanimous admission he gave up, turned his attention to the flour, made his breakfast and departed, leaving me to savor the fruits of unforgiveness to the full.

  * * * * * *

  Naturally silence reigned supreme that evening too. I was dying to ask how Kastir had riposted over his fallen dam, and was gagged by dignity, while he, understandably enough, would not oblige by answering my thoughts. We parted in haughty
silence. As I tossed on my sweltering bed I thought spitefully that the one consolation was the certainty that the cave was hotter still.

  After another silent breakfast I set to grinding my last grass-seed harvest, before the heat became too great. I was still nursing the grudge with considerable tenderness. But not so tenderly I missed his exit from the cave, made with a most uncharacteristic wavering stride, and a catch at the rock before the harsh sunlight showed me his face.

  Grass-seed flew to perdition. I must have kicked the quern as I jumped, for later there were bruises on my toes, I know I trampled the last vines in reaching him, to catch his arms, crying, “Sit down—there!”

  He sat down plump against the rock. I dropped to my knees in front of him, grudge and dignity forgotten, voicing the first words that reached my tongue. “Don’t look like that, don’t feel it so, it isn’t—oh, Zam, what’s he done?”

  This time I read his expression correctly, however tiny the signs. A coldness which meant pride concealing dread that I would savage him again, a shattered underlay from some disaster for which he blamed himself. A stricken numbness because he could not ask, however mutely, for comfort. He looked down, shaking his head. I said, “Tell me—please.”

  When it came, it was in mindspeech, less revealing than the voice.

  He still would not look at me.

  I let my turbulent thoughts urge, Don’t blame yourself, it was my fault, I pushed you into it. But it was useless to argue that he was not responsible. There was no way to ease a guilt sprung from his chosen beliefs; no softening for the blow.

  I had a wild impulse to hug him, as if physical solace would be any better, and instantly drove it from my mind. “I’ll make you some tea.”

  The kettle heated, and boiled. I poured out. He sat with the cup a long time, his eyes fixed beyond the fire, out on the white, heat-hazed sky, before he finally spoke.

  “He cannot be allowed to do this. Next time will be worse.”

  My mouth shot open and I clamped it shut and held my breath.

  He looked up at me, too tired for anything but the decision’s weight. He said, “I’ll have to get rid of him.”

  I curbed an impulse to clap my hands and whoop, At last! And another, equally pressing, to burst out, How?

  He got up. Paused. Said awkwardly, “Thank you for the tea.”

  I said in a hurry, “Stay under the finlythes, it won’t be quite so hot down there. I won’t trouble you.”

  He looked taken aback. Then answered, yet more awkwardly, “Very well.”

  * * * * * *

  The expulsion took several days, and he would not disclose the method, which strained our fragile armistice to breaking point. But at last he came up at midday from the finlythes, watched a while as I pounded yams to break the fibers, then said abruptly, “He’s gone.”

  This time I did clap my hands. “Good, good!” I said gleefully. “Where? How?”

  “Fengthir. I made him give nonsense orders, muddle his plans, tell a commission of enquiry to—ah—step on themselves. They demoted him. ‘Project Hethria’ has been split between engineers, officials and generals. Everran is under an Assembly Committee for the duration. They meant to commit him as a lunatic, but when I let him be he turned sensible again. So they put him in a chain gang. On the wall.”

  I said nothing. I was seeing Zem sprawled in that arc of wine, and thinking viciously that this justice, however poetic, was not enough.

  Zam sat on his heels by the quern and idly pushed the rubbing stone to and fro. “You hate him, don’t you?”

  The blank tone did not deceive me. I knew he considered hate more contemptible than vengefulness.

  “Don’t you hate a snake?” I asked.

  “Fear it, yes. Hate it, no.”

  I stared.

  He said, “Fear is sensible. Hate is Ammath.”

  “I don’t see the difference.”

  “Few people do.” He studied the rubbing stone. “Beryx always could. When we had the trouble with Moriana, he was afraid of her. Terrified. But he never let himself fall into hate.”

  I thought tartly that it might be possible for Beryx, but not for me. As my thoughts moved to Kastir, pure revulsion raised gooseflesh on my skin.

  “Poor devil,” said Zam, sounding very far away. “Demoted, disgraced, all his great schemes gone to someone else. He even lost his governorship. Down in the dust—for the second time in his life.”

  “He deserved every bit of it! He hung those men, he sent the others into the sandstorm, he killed Zem—!”

  “And he loved you, in his own strange way.”

  That stopped me dead. His attention was still on the quern.

  “That was why he did it, you know.” He sounded yet more remote. “For you. Tried to ruin Hethria, and did ruin himself. Unjust. Life isn’t just. Beryx said that once. ‘I suppose that’s why we strive for justice above all, and never accomplish it.’”

  I was too appalled, too enraged by the idea that it was all my fault, to make any retort. His next words came with a jerk.

  “Did you ever love him? When you married him?”

  My feelings had not turned to affront before he said hastily, “No, I shouldn’t have said that, it was wrong,” which made me feel just guilty enough to waive my entitled snub.

  “I—knew he was in love with me.”

  He averted his head. I was driven to defense.

  “Nobody could love Kastir, he’s just too cold and calculating and—oh, I can’t explain—repulsive! But I didn’t hate him, and I knew him and—I meant to get Everran back.”

  To my wonder and my considerable if base relief, he let this last iniquity pass. When he spoke, head still averted, the words might have been pulled out of him.

  “Then what does make someone—fit to love?”

  I was so off-balance I rushed in without the smallest attempt to think.

  “Oh, being warm and funny and able to make a joke of it but still let you see it’s in earnest underneath, someone who has feelings and doesn’t mind showing them, who could get carried away sometimes, someone like—”

  I did not have to stop. The words did not hang between us, they were already in both our minds. Someone like Zem.

  I too averted my head. At length Zam said, “That seems reasonable.” Then he stood up, and retreated to the cave.

  * * * * * *

  Being true to its kind, Kastir’s replacement committee gave us a welcome respite while they settled their pecking order and paralyzed “Project Hethria” with squabbles over whose policy prevailed and who had the lion’s share of funds and supplies and men. Kastir, I thought, must be foaming in his chains at being forced to watch, impotent, while the whole mighty enterprise wound down like a worn-out clockwork toy.

  The Kemreswash workers doggedly continued to put up their dam, and Zam as doggedly knocked it down again. The dassyx garrisons must have been in dire need of a bath, the Gebros demolition had slowed to a crawl, the pressure groups were stagnant, and without a single intelligence to keep up momentum and supply sensation, “Project Hethria” had sunk from the Estarian news. The only ominous developments were a steady massing of troops in Gebria, the generals’ emergence at the top of the pecking order, and the inexorable approach of the autumn storms.

  “What if Kemreswash does run?” I asked, as Zam scanned the northern sky yet again, and yet again frowned at the towering gray cloud packs embedded in a milky haze that was more than heat. “You can knock the dam down in time to let it through. The barrages will fill our cisterns, and it won’t matter anywhere else.”

  “Yes, it will.” He sounded dour. “Once storms cross those western dunes there’ll be water everywhere. Enough to let the army through.”

  “Couldn’t you push the storms away?”

  “I could. But that would tamper too
much with Math.”

  “Oh, air and water! You can’t kill their pestiferous soldiers, you can’t stop a storm, you can’t twist the committee’s minds, you can’t raise another sandstorm, you can’t cause any more strikes—in the Four’s name, just what can you do?”

  He made his most crushing retort, which was none at all. Two faint creases had come between his brows, and he was gazing away east with an absent, calculating look that meant plans in genesis.

  I felt fresh after a day mostly spent lazing under the ferns to watch the washing dry. As I looked at him, I remembered that moment on the rock wall. Then, deliberately, I set out to read his mind.

  Aedryx, schooled in Ruanbrarx, have a fixed procedure for the art. Those with empathy do it naturally. Somewhere between the two, with no idea of a technique, I simply stared at his profile. Then, because it was my only mental skill, I stopped the flow of verbal thought and tried to turn my consciousness from a sorting house for perception into a receptacle.

  From the way Zem had quoted Kastir back to himself, I expected a stream of coherent verbal data, perhaps unpunctuated, but arriving in sequence, a silent soliloquy. But it is only the skilled and schooled who can sort their reception into that kind of intelligible stream. What I caught, muddled by my own shock at getting anything, was more like a series of unpatterned lightning flashes that crossed my mind half a dozen or so at once, a mix of visual images, sense data, snips of memory, correlation, deduction, calculation, all arriving so fast I could not decipher them, in what I know now were the characteristic patterns of Zam’s mind. The general impact was so overwhelming that I lost contact almost instantly. But not before my novice clumsiness had made its presence felt.

  Zam went absolutely still. He had been sitting still before, but this seemed involuntary, as if I had put a finger into the core of his spine. It only lasted long enough for me to see him relax as the contact broke. Then he had turned his head, those gray eyes more than usually intense but quite unemotional, and asked quietly, “How much did you catch?”

  “I—oh—” How did you know? was already out of date. I tried to play back what memory had snagged from that welter of images.