by Greg Bear
Page 5
She lowered her top. “This is the one who fel from the sky and lived,” she said. “He claims to come from a place caled Erde- Tyrene. ”
The old man stopped chewing and lifted his head again, as if hearing distant music. “Say that again, clearly. ”
“Erde-Tyrene,” she obliged.
“Have him say it. ”
I spoke the name of my birth-planet. Now the old man rotated on his ankles and rearranged his squat, arm resting on drawn-up knee, the half-eaten rabbit leg dangling from one outstretched hand.
“I know of it,” he said. “Marontik, that’s the biggest city. ”
“Yes!”
“Outside lie the lands of grass and sand and snow. There is a place where the land splits like a woman, deep and shadowed, and mountains of ice rol between mountains of rock and grind and drop big stones from their jaws. ”
“Have you been there?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not since I was a babe. I don’t remember it. But my best wife was older. She came from there before me,” he said. “She caled it Erda. She described it. Not like this place. ”
“No,” I agreed.
Now the old man switched over to the language I had been raised with. He spoke it fluently enough, but with an odd accent, and using some words that were not familiar. He motioned me to come closer and sit beside him, while he said, in my birth-tongue, “That wife was a teler of the finest stories. She filed my life with great flares of passion and dream. ”
“What’s he saying?” Vinnevra asked me.
“He’s teling me about his favorite wife,” I said.
Vinnevra lay down on her elbow on his other side. “My mother’s mother. She died in the city before I was born. ”
“We have been here for many long nights—many years, ”
Gamelpar said. “My best wife would be eager to hear about Marontik. How is it now?”
I described the old city and its baloon rafts and farm-to-market squares, and the power stations left nearby by the Forerunners. I did not go into my experiences with the Manipular or the Didact.
Now was not the time.
“She said nothing of baloon rafts,” he said. “But that was long ago. Vinnevra tels me you lost a friend somewhere out there. Was he one of the smal people with sweet voices?”
“He is,” I said.
“Wel, some of them are here, too, but not in the city or nearby.
Way over toward the far wal. We saw them long ago, and then they walked a long walk. They were honest, in their way, but had little respect for size or age. ”
Riser had been quite old when he took me under his guidance.
Cha manush lived long lives.
Finaly, Vinnevra said, “Gamelpar, we are hungry. We have come from the vilage where there is no good food. You remember. ”
“I sent you there to look when the sky burned and the stars fel,”
the old man said, nodding. “They stil don’t like me there. ”
I could not keep track of the windings of al these stories. Which were true? Perhaps for these People, on this broken wheel, it didn’t matter.
“They have no rabbits,” Vinnevra wheedled.
“They eat al the game and leave none to breed, and then they go hungry. They burn al the wood and then go cold, they flee the city but live nearby and fear to leave . . . and then they vanish. But it is not their evil. Forerunners carry some off to the Palace of Pain, and now the vilagers are stiff with fear and don’t want to do anything.
Pfaaah!” He threw the bare bone out into the bushes.
“Share your meat and I’l tel you what I know,” I said.
Gamelpar stared into the fire and softly cackled. “No,” he said.
Vinnevra glanced at me reproachfuly. She knew how to deal with Gamelpar, it seemed, and I did not. “We went back, and the dead Forerunners are stil there. Nobody has come for them. ”
The old man looked up, reconsidered for a moment, then made up his mind. “Here, clean this branch,” he said to Vinnevra, “and I wil spit and cook the second rabbit. It wil be for both of you. I have eaten my fil. ” When Vinnevra had stripped away the bark with teeth and nails, he thrust the stick through the rabbit, then tossed it directly into the fire, skin and al, and used the end of the stick to shift and turn it.
And so we settled next to him, waiting for the second rabbit to cook, beneath the fitful stars, with the bright silvery band of the sky bridge high above.
Gamelpar turned the rabbit again on the coals. The smel of burned fur was not appetizing. Was he trying to punish me for my presumption?
“Rabbit cooked in its skin is most succulent,” Vinnevra explained.
“Smels bad, eats fine,” Gamelpar agreed. “Tel me what you saw. The fire in the sky, and the brightness, and you faling—what did it look like, from up there?”
I told him a little of what had happened. “The Forerunners were angry at each other, last time I was with them. And the dead ones —”
“You were with them?” Gamelpar lay down on his side, then on his back, and contemplated the bridge.
“I did not know them. It could be they were carrying me someplace. ”
He nodded. “Shooting stars—dying ships. Lots of ships. But the brightness—the sky turning so white the eyes and head hurt—I don’t know what that is. Do you?”
Gamelpar was proving remarkably astute. Stil, he wasn’t exactly teling me the truth, about not understanding—not knowing. He knew something, or at least he had made a decent guess, and now he was testing me.
Ask him who else he is.
“Why are you scowling?” Vinnevra asked me.
I shook my head. I was not about to serve as a go-between for two old, dead warriors—not yet. I fancied I was stil my own person. For now.
“There,” he said, indicating a blotchy patch about a third of the way up one side of the band, “is where a big ship crashed into the hoop, before the brightness and the shooting stars, just before you fel from the sky. ” He reached for another, thicker stick, handed it to Vinnevra, and blew out through his lips. She showed the stick to me. There were many notches already. “Mark another double handful,” the old man instructed. “A day or so doesn’t matter. ”
Vinnevra took the stick and removed a sharp rock from her pocket. She began to carve.
“Many mysteries,” the old man said. “Why are we here? Are we like animals in a pit that fight to amuse the Forerunners?”
“We have something they want,” I said.
The old man shifted the rabbit again and bright orange sparks flew up into the cool air. “Can’t let the skin go black al over,” he murmured. “Can’t let the legs burn through. Why do they move us around, why do they take us to the Palace of Pain . . . why treat us so?”
I itched to ask about this Palace of Pain, but the time did not seem right—the look on his face as he said those words . . .
“Humans defeated Forerunners, long ago,” I said. “Forerunners stil resent it. ”
Now the old man’s expression realy sharpened. His jaw firmed and dropped a little, making his face look younger. “You remember such times?” he asked. He fixed me with an intense, if rheumy-eyed, stare, then leaned toward me and whispered, “Are there old spirits inside your head?”
“I think so,” I answered. “Yes. ”
Vinnevra considered both of us with alarm and moved away from the fire.
“Does he have a name?”
“No name . . . just a title. A rank. ”
“Ah. A highborn, then. ”
“You’re encouraging him!” Vinnevra accused from the shadows, but who was encouraging whom, she did not make clear.
“Pfaah,” the old man said, and lifted the rabbit. “Break off a leg. I wish we had some salt. ” He poked the now-bare spit over his shoulder, toward the part of the bridge spinning into shadow. The blotch where a ship had crashed was a dark gray smear, tapering in one direction, an
d then flaring outward with the marks of burning debris.
“Before the strange brightness, the sun was different—true?” I asked.
Vinnevra had moved closer again, and she answered this time.
“Golden-red,” she said. “Warmer. Larger. ”
“Did you see the sky bridge—the hoop in the sky—disappear into the brightness, before al the rest?”
The old man favored me with a gap-toothed grin. “So it did. ”
“Then it is a different sun,” I said.
“Not different,” Vinnevra insisted, her brows arching. “It changed color. That’s all. ” Any other explanation was too vast for her.
Perhaps too vast for me as wel. Moving something the size of this Halo the way the Didact had moved us from Erde-Tyrene to Charum Hakkor, then out to the San’Shyuum world . . .
But I did not back down. “Different suns,” I insisted.
The old man pondered, his nearly toothless jaw moving up and down. I began to regret this discussion—we were distracting him from portioning out the rabbit.
He raised himself up in his seated posture and squared his hands on his knees. “I was brought here when I was an infant,” he said. “I do not remember much about Erda, but my best wife told me it had a flat horizon, but when you are high up, the end of the world curves down to each side, not up. Makes you wonder what’s on the other side of the wheel, down there . . . doesn’t it?”
He caught me staring at the rabbit. I wiped drool from the corner of my lips. He tapped his finger lightly on the ground, then lowered his head, as if in mourning. “I remember the long journey in the gray wals and no way to see the sky, with air that smeled of closeness and sweet and bitter herbs, like perfume. Herbs that kept us quiet during the voyage. And then . . . the first ones were brought here, to the hoop. ” He tapped the ground again. More firmly. “I was just a babe. We had lived for many days within gray wals, but now the great ship shook us like ants from a cup. None were hurt; we drifted like fluff to the dirt and rocks.
“Then, so I was told, we stood together, holding each other, and looked up, and saw the sky bridge, the way the land rose up, and there was much wailing. Finaly, we separated into families and smal tribes, and wandered this way and that—”—he swung his arms—“outward. We came to forests and plains and we made our homes there, as we were used to living. For this while, in my youth, we were tended like cattle, but because there was little pain and we were fed, we came to believe this was where we should be.
“The Forerunners gave us bricks. We used the bricks and made wals and houses and great buildings. We lived in peace and raised children, and the children were touched by the Lady, and when they could speak, they told us of this beautiful Forerunner, so tal, who spoke to them in their first days and filed them with light. I already knew her. She had come to me on Erda. ”
“When you were born?” I asked.
Gamelpar nodded. “But it was not the same, how the Lady touched those from Erda and how she touched the children born here. As I grew up, I sometimes remembered things that I never lived. ” His voice grew thin. He lifted his gnarled hand, pointed in a broad sweep, up toward the center of the Halo’s spin, then down, as if poking his finger through to the other side. “So many memories,” he whispered. “Old, old memories—in dreams, in visions. Weak and frightened . . . old, lost ghosts.
“But years later, the old memories became stronger—after we finished the city, long after I was husband and father. After the sky changed five times. Those were great darknesses, long, long nights.
Different suns, different stars, came and went.
“Each time, glowing bars climbed across the sky and a big, pale blue disk appeared inside the hoop, like the hub of a wheel. Each time came the white brightness, then a great darkness. . . . ” He swept his hand across the welkin. “Spokes shot out from the hub, and glowing fires burned on the ends of the spokes, to warm us in that darkness. And twice we saw something other than brightness and darkness—something terrible that came out of the hub and the center of the wheel—something that gave us fits and hurt the soul. ”
He rubbed his forehead and looked away from the fire. “But we did not die. We moved again. Under the orange sun, where Vinnevra was born. ”
Vinnevra stared intently at her grandfather.
“It was under that sun that the Forerunners came in their boats and carried us off to the Palace of Pain. They stole away my daughter and her mate, and many, many others. They came so often we were afraid, and we abandoned the city, crawled back out onto the plain. And there, as we huddled in fear, the beast came among us and pointed its awful arms, and raised its jeweled eyes. ”
I started at this. “Beast?”
“Bigger than men, bigger than Forerunners. Many arms, many smal legs, curled up like a shriveled spider. It sat on a big dish, flying this high over the ground. ” He raised his arm as high as he could. “Beside it flew a large machine with a single green eye. ” He laced his gnarled, knobby fingers together, shaping a kind of complicated bal. “These two spoke in our heads as wel as in our ears—teling us of our fates. The Primordial and Green-eye were deciding who would live and who would die.
“But some who had been taken to the Palace of Pain returned.
At first we were happy that they were back, but then we saw how some had changed. Some grew other skins, other eyes, other arms.
They broke apart and joined together, then made others sick. They wailed in pain and tried to touch us. These poor monsters died, or we kiled them later.
“And Green-eye said to the Beast, ‘Not al resist . . . not al survive. ’ But most do. Why? Why do many survive, but some do not?” Gamelpar shuddered. “Twisted death. Death that spreads like spiled blood. Those who survived . . . who did not die . . . the Forerunners took some back to the Palace of Pain, and some they left behind. We do not know how they chose. And then . . . ”