by David Brin
Was this a symptom? Head injuries sometimes caused loss of memory-or even ability to make memories-so everything was forever new.
At least he can feel some joy, she thought. Take the way he beamed, every time she approached. It felt strange and sweet for someone to be so reliably happy to see her. Perhaps if she were prettier, it wouldn't be so befuddling. But the handsome dark outlander was a sick man, she recalled. Out of his proper mind.
And yet, she pondered further, what is the past but a fiction, invented by a mind in order to go on functioning? She had spent a year fleeing memory, for reasons that had seemed important then.
Now it just doesn't amount to much.
She worried about what was going on up in the Rim-mers. Her brothers stayed close to her thoughts.
If you'd accepted Taine's original proposal of marriage, you might have had little ones by now, and their future to fret about, as well.
Refusing the august gray-headed sage had caused a stir. How many other offers would there be for the hand of a shy papermaker's daughter without much figure, a young woman with more passion for symbols on a page than dancing or the other arts of dalliance? Soon after turning Taine down, Joshu's attentions had seemed to ratify her decision, till she realized the young bookbinder might only be using her as a diversion during his journeyman year in Biblos, nothing more.
Ironic, isn't it? Lark could have his pick of young women on the Slope, yet his philosophy makes him choose celibacy. My conclusions about Jijo and the Six are the opposite to his. Yet I'm alone too.
Different highways, arriving at the same solitary dead end.
And now come gods from space, diverting us all onto a road whose markings we can't see.
They still lacked a sixth for the concert. Despite having introduced string instruments to Jijo, humans traditionally played flute in a mixed sextet. Jop was an adept, but the farmer declined, preferring to pore over his book of scrolls. Finally, young Jomah agreed to sit in for luck, equipped with a pair of spoons.
So much for the vaunted contribution of Earthlings to musical life on Jijo.
Hidden under Blade's heavy shell, the mirliton groaned a low, rumbling note, soon joined by a mournful sigh from one of the jugs under Blade's left-front leg. The qheuen's seeing-band winked at Ulgor, and the urs took her cue to lift the violus, laying the double bow across the strings, drawing twin wavering notes, embellishing the mirliton's basso moan. A multilevel chord was struck. It held. . . .
The moment of duet harmony seemed to stretch on and on. Sara stopped breathing, lest any other sound break the extraordinary consonance. Even Fakoon rolled forward, visibly moved.
If the rest is anything like this . . .
Pzora chose the next instant to pile in, disrupting the aching sweetness with an eager clangor of bells and cymbals. The Dolo pharmacist seemed zealously unaware of what er had shattered, rushing ahead of the beat, halting, then pushing on again. After a stunned instant, members of the hoonish crew roared with laughter. Noor on the masts chittered as Ulgor and Blade shared looks that needed no rewq to interpret- equivalents to a shrug and a wink. They played on, incorporating Pzora's enthusiasm in a catchy four-part rhythm.
Sara recalled being taught piano by her mother, from music that was actually written down, now a nearly forgotten art. Jijoan sextets weaved their impromptu harmonies out of separate threads, merging and diverging through one congenial coincidence after another. Human music used to work that way in most pre-Contact cultures, before the Euro-West hit on symphonies and other more rigorous forms. Or so Sara had read.
Overcoming shyness, Jomah started rattling his spoons as Blade puffed a calliope of breathy notes. The hoonish helmsman inflated his air sac to answer the mirliton's rumble, singing an improvisation, without words in any known language.
Then Fakoon wheeled forward, arms swaying delicately, reminding Sara of gently rising smoke.
What had been exquisite, then humorous, soon took on a quality even more highly prized.
Unity.
She glanced at the Stranger, his face overcome with emotion, eyes delighting in Fakoon's opening moves. The left hand thumped his blanket happily, beating time.
You can tell what kind of man he used to be, she mused. Even horribly mutilated, in awful pain, he spends his waking time enthralled by good things.
The thought seemed to catch in her throat. Taken by surprise, Sara turned away, hiding a choking wave of sadness that abruptly blurred her vision.
Tarek Town appeared soon after, perched between the merging rivers Roney and Bibur.
From afar it seemed no more than a greenish knoll, like any other hill. Grayish shapes studded the mound, as if boulders lay strewn over the slopes. Then the , Hauph-woa rounded one last oxbow turn, and what had seemed solid from a distance now spread open-a huge, nearly hollow erection of webbing, festooned with greenery. The "boulders" were the protruding tips of massive towers, enmeshed in a maze of cables, conduits, rope bridges, netting, ramps, and sloping ladders, all draped under lush, flowing foliage.
The air filled with a humid redolence, the scent of countless flowers.
Sara liked to squint and imagine Tarek in other days, back when it was but a hamlet to the mighty Buyur, yet a place of true civilization, humming with faithful machines, vibrant with the footsteps of visitors from far star systems, thronging with sky-craft that settled gracefully on rooftop landing pads. A city lively with aspirations that she, a forest primitive, might never imagine.
But then, as the noon crew poled the Hauph-woa toward a concealed dock, no amount of squinting could mask how far Tarek had fallen. Out of a multitude of windows, only a few still shone with million-year-old glazing. Others featured crude chimneys, staining once-smooth walls with the soot of cook fires. Wide ledges where floating aircraft once landed now supported miniature orchards or coops for noisy herd chicks. Instead of self-propelled machines, the streets swarmed with commerce carried on the backs of tinkers and traders, or animal-drawn carts.
High up a nearby tower, some young g'Kek sped around a rail-less ramp, heedless of the drop, their spokes blurry with speed. Urban life suited the wheeled sept. Rare elsewhere, g'Kek made up the town's largest group.
Northward, crossing Tarek's link to the mainland, lay a "recent" ruin of stone blocks-the thousand-year-old city wall, erected by the Gray Queens who long ruled here, until a great siege ended their reign, back when the Dolo paper mill was new. Scorch marks still smeared the fallen bulwark, testimony to the violent birth of the Commons-of-Six.
However many times she passed through Tarek Town, it remained a marvel. Jijo's closest thing to a cosmopolitan place, where all races mixed as equals.
Along with hoon-crewed vessels, countless smaller boats skimmed under lacy, arching bridges, rowed by human trapper-traders, bringing hides and wares to market. River-traeki, with amphibious basal segments, churned along the narrow canals, much faster than their land-bound cousins managed ashore.
Near the river confluence, a special port sheltered two hissing steam-ferries, linking forest freeholds on the north bank to southern grasslands where urrish hordes galloped. But on a sloping beach nearby, Sara saw some blue qheuens climb ashore, avoiding ferry tolls by walking across the river bottom, a talent useful long ago, when blue rebels toppled the Queens' tyranny-helped by an army of men, traeki, and hoon.
In all the tales about that battle, none credits the insurgents with a weapon I think crucial-that of language.
It took some time for the Hauph-woa to weave through a crowd of boats and tie up at a cramped wharf.
The jammed harbor helped explain the lack of upstream traffic.
Soon as the moorings were tied, Haupb-woa's contingent of noor squalled and blocked the gangways, demanding their pay. Rumbling a well-pleased umble song of gratitude, the ship's cook went down the row of black-furred creatures, handing out chunks of hard candy. Each noor tucked one sourball in its mouth and the rest into a waterproof pouch, then leaped over the rail to cavo
rt away between bumping, swaying hulls, risking death by narrow margins.
As usual, the Stranger watched with a complex mixture of surprise, delight, and sadness in his eyes. He spurned a stretcher, and went down the ramp leaning on a cane, while Pzora puffed with pride, having delivered a patient from death's door to the expert healers of Tarek Town. While Prity went to hail a rickshaw, they observed the hoonish crew strain with block and tackle, lifting crates from the hold, many of them bound from Nelo's paper works for various printers, scribes, and scholars. In their place, stevedores gently lowered ribboned packages, all bound from Tarek for the same destination.
--Pottery shards and slag from urrish forges.
--Used-up ceramic saws from qheuenish woodcarving shops.
--Worn-out printers' type and broken violin strings.
--Whatever parts of the deceased that could not be counted on to rot away, such as the bones of cremated humans and urs, hoonish vertebrae, g'Kek axles, and traeki wax crystals. The glittering dust of ground-up qheuen carapaces.
--And always lots of ancient Buyur junk-it all wound up on dross boats, sent to the great Midden, to be cleansed by water, fire, and time.
An urrish rickshaw driver helped them usher the injured man onto her low four-wheeled cart, while Pzora stood behind, holding the Stranger's shoulders with two tendril-hands. "You're sure you don't need me to come along?" Sara asked, having second thoughts.
Pzora waved her gently away. "It is a short distance to the clinic, is it not? Have you not urgent matters to attend? Have i not our own tasks to perform? All-of-you shall meet all-of-us again, tonight. And our lucky patient will your fine selves perceive on the morrow."
The Stranger's dark eyes caught hers, and he smiled, patting her hand. There was no sign of his former terror of the traeki.
I guess I was wrong about his injury. He does acquire memories.
Maybe in Tarek we can find out who he is. If family or friends can be brought, they'll help him more than I ever could. That evoked a pang, but Sara reminded herself that she was no longer a child, tending a wounded chipwing. What matters is that he's well cared for. Now Pzora's right. I've got other matters to attend.
The anarchic style of Tarek Town meant there was no one "official" at the dock to greet them. But merchants hurried to the quay, eager for their cargoes. Others came in search of news. There were rumors of horrible events up north and east. Of landings by frost-covered Zang ships, or whole towns leveled by titanic rays. Gossip told of a populace herded toward mass trials, conducted by insectoid judges from the Galactic Institute of Migration. One credulous human even argued with Jop, insisting the farmer was mistaken, since everyone knew Dolo Village was destroyed.
That explains why no boats came upstream, Sara thought. From Tarek, the intruder ship must have seemed to lay a streak of fire right over Sara's hometown.
Rumors were a chief stock in trade of all harbors, but surely cooler heads prevailed elsewhere?
Prity signaled that all of Nelo's crates were signed for, save the one she pulled on a wheeled dolly to be hand carried to Engril the Copier. Sara bade farewell to the other Dolo emissaries, agreeing to meet them again tonight and compare notes.
"Come, Jomah," she told Henrik's son, who was staring at the bustle and tumult of city life. "We'll take you to your uncle first."
Voices seemed subdued in the harborside market; the haggling was sullen, perfunctory. Most buyers and sellers did not even wear rewq while dickering with members of other races-a sure sign they were only going through the motions.
One shopkeeper, an elegant gray qheuen with intricate, gold-fleck shell decorations, held up two claw-hands and counted nine jagged toe-pads, indicating by a slant of her cupola that it was her final offer. The trader, a rustic-looking red, hissed in dismay, gesturing at the fine salt crystals she had brought all the way from the distant sea. While passing, Sara overheard the city qheuen's reply.
"Quality or amount, what difference does it make? The price, why should you or I care?"
The answer shocked Sara. An urbane gray, indifferent over a commercial transaction? The locals must be in a state, all right.
As if we in Dolo were any better?
Townsfolk mostly gathered in small groups, gossiping in dialects of their own kind. Many of the hoons carried iron-shod canes-usually a perquisite of captains- while urrish tinkers, herders, and traders kept close to their precious pack beasts. Each urs carried an ax or machete sheathed at her withers, useful tools in the dry woods and plains where they dwelled.
So why did the sight make Sara feel edgy?
Come to think of it, many humans were behaving much the same, walking in close company, armed with tools suitable for chopping, digging, hunting-or uses Sara did not want to think about. The g'Kek populace kept to their apartments and studios.
I'd better find out what's going on, and soon, Sara thought.
It was a relief when the tense market zone ended at the glaring brightness of the Jumble.
Till now, they had walked in shade, but here an opening gaped under the shelter-canopy. Once towering structures lay in heaps, their neat geometries snapped, splintered and shoved together, giving the place its name. Scummy fluid shimmered between the shattered stones, where oily bubbles formed and popped, relics of a time when this place was caustic, poisonous, and ultimately restoring.
Jomah shaded his eyes. "I don't see it," he complained.
Sara resisted an impulse to pull him back out of the light. "See what?"
"The spider. Isn't it s'pozed to be here, in the middle?"
"This spider's dead, Jomah. It died before it could do much more than get started. That's why Tarek Town isn't just another swamp full of chewed-up boulders, like we have east of Dolo."
"I know that. But my father says it's still here."
"It is," she agreed. "We've been passing beneath it ever since the boat docked. See all those cables overhead? Even the ramps and ladders are woven from old mule-spider cords, many of them still living, after a fashion."
"But where's the spider?"
"It was in the cables, Jomah." She motioned toward the crisscrossing web, twining among the towers. "United, they made a life form whose job was to demolish this old Buyur place. But then one day, before even the g'Kek came to Jijo, this particular spider got sick. The vines forgot to work together. When they went wild, the spider was no more."
"Oh." The boy pondered this awhile, then he turned around. "Okay, well there's another thing I know is around here-"
"Jomah," Sara began, not wanting to squelch the child, who seemed so much like Dwer at that age. "We have to get-"
"I heard it's here near the Jumble. I want to see the horse."
"The ho-" Sara blinked, then exhaled a sigh. "Oh! Well, why not. If you promise we'll go straight to your uncle's, right after. Yes?"
The boy nodded vigorously, slinging his duffel again.
Sara picked up her own bag, heavy with notes from her
research. Prity wheeled the dolly behind.
Sara pointed. "It's this way, near the entrance to Earthtown."
Ever since the Gray Queens' menacing catapults were burned, Tarek Town had been open to all races. Still, each of the Six had a favored section of town, with humans holding the fashionable south quarter, due to wealth and prestige generated by the book trade. The three of them walked toward that district under a shaded loggia that surrounded the Jumble. The arching trellises bloomed with fragrant bowlflowers, but even that strong scent was overwhelmed as they passed the sector where urs traders kept their herds. Some unmated urrish youths loitered by the entrance. One lowered her head, offering a desultory snarl at Sara.
Suddenly, all the urs lifted their long necks in the same direction, their short, furry ears quivering toward a distant rumble that came rolling from the south. Sara's reflex thought was thunder. Then a shiver of concern coursed her spine as she turned to scan the sky.
Can it be happening again?
Jomah took
her arm and shook his head. The boy listened to the growling echo with a look of professional interest. "It's a test. I can tell. No muffling from confinement or mass loading. Some exploser is checking his charges."
She muttered-"How reassuring." But only compared to the brief, fearsome thought of more god-ships tearing across the heavens.
The young urs were eyeing them again. Sara didn't like the look in their eyes.
"All right then, Jomah. Let's go see the horse."
The Statuary Garden lay at the Jumble's southern end. Most of the "art works" were lightly scored graffiti, or crude caricatures scratched on stone slabs during the long centuries when literacy was rare on the Slope. But some rock carvings were stunning in their abstract intricacy-such as a grouping of spherical balls, like clustered grapes, or a jagged sheaf of knifelike spears, jutting at pugnacious angles-all carved by the grinding teeth of old-time gray matriarchs who had lost dynastic struggles during the long qheuenish reign and were chained in place by victorious rivals, whiling away their last days under a blazing sun.
A sharply realistic bas relief, from one of the earliest eras, lay etched on a nearby pillar. Slow subsidence into corrosive mud had eaten away most of the frieze. Still, in several spots one could make out faces. Huge bulging eyes stared acutely from globelike heads set on bodies that reared upward with supple forelegs raised, as if straining against the verdict of destiny. Even after such a long time, the eyes seemed somehow lit with keen intelligence. No one on Jijo had seen expressions of such subtlety or poignancy on a glaver's face for a very long time.
In recent years, Tarek's verdant canopy had been diverted over this part of the Jumble, putting most of the carvings under shade. Even so, orthodox zealots sometimes called for all the sculptures to be razed. But most citizens reasoned that Jijo already had the job in hand. The mule-spider's ancient lake still dissolved rock, albeit slowly. These works would not outlive the Six themselves.
Or so we thought. It always seemed we had plenty of time.