Old Earth Stories Part 17

The a.s.sociation stars turned to streaks and disappeared.

So, just as his father had tried to explain, Donn was leapfrogged through Susy-s.p.a.ce. What he hadn't been told was what it would feel feel like. like.

Susy-s.p.a.ce was another universe, laid over Donn's own. It had its own laws. He was transformed into a supersymmetric copy of himself an s-ghost in Susy-s.p.a.ce. And it was... different. Things were blurred. Susy-s.p.a.ce cut through the distinction between Donn, here, and the stars, out there. Donn could feel feel the scale of the journey, as if the arch of the universe were part of his own being. Distance crushed him. the scale of the journey, as if the arch of the universe were part of his own being. Distance crushed him.

But at last it was done.

The Reef of ships popped out of Susy-s.p.a.ce, sparkling with s-electrons and neutralinos.

Samm and Donn stared at each other. "Let's not do that that again," said Donn. again," said Donn.

"Agreed." Samm tapped his data slate, to get an external view.

Darkness, broken only by the faintest smudges of gray light.

"Are they galaxies?" asked Donn.

"Oops," said Samm.

[image]

The funerary procession drew up in the courtyard of the great House. The blueshifted light of Old Earth's sky washed coldly down over the shuffling people, and through a screen of bubbling clouds Peri glimpsed stars sailing indifferently by.

Peri took his place at the side of his older brother, MacoFeri. His mother CuluAndry, supported by her two daughters, stood behind him. ButaFeri's hea.r.s.e would be drawn by two tamed spindlings. Peri's father had been a big man in every sense, a fleshy, loud, corpulent man, and now his coffin was a great box whose weight made the axles of his hea.r.s.e creak.

Despite his bulk, or perhaps because of it, Buta had always been an efficient man, and he had trained his wife, sons, and daughters in similar habits of mind. So it was that the family was ready at the head of the cortege long before the procession's untidy body, a.s.sembled from other leading citizens of Foro, had gathered in place. Their coughs and grumbles in the chill semi-dark were a counterpoint to the steady wash of the river Foo, from which the town had taken its name, as it pa.s.sed through its channeled banks across the Shelf.

"It's that buffoon of a mayor who's holding everybody up," MacoFeri complained.

Culu's face closed up in distress. BoFeri, Peri's eldest sister, snapped, "Hold your tongue, Maco. It's not the time."

Maco snorted. "I have better things to do than stand around waiting for a fat oaf like that even today." But he subsided.

As the family continued to wait in the chill, servants from the Attic moved silently among them, bearing trays of hot drinks and pastries. The servants were dressed in drab garments that seemed to blend into the muddy light, and they kept their faces averted; the servants tried to be invisible, as if their trays floated through the air by themselves.

The delay gave PeriAndry, seventeen years old, an unwelcome opportunity to sort through his confused emotions. This broad circular plaza was the courtyard of ButaFeri's grand town House. The lesser lights of the town were scattered before the cliff face beneath which Foro nestled, dissipating in the enigmatic ruins at the town's edge. In this setting the House glowed like a jewel but ButaFeri had always counseled humility. Foro had been a much prouder place before the last Formidable Caress, he said. The "town" as it was presently const.i.tuted seemed to have been carved out of the remains of a palace, a single mighty building within a greater city. And once, ButaFeri would say, even this wide courtyard had been enclosed by a vast, vanished dome, and over this ancient floor, now crossed by the hooves of spindlings, the richer citizens of a more fortunate time had strolled in heated comfort. Buta had been a wise man, but he had shared such perspectives all too infrequently with his younger son.

Just at that moment, as PeriAndry's sense of loss was deepest, he first saw the girl.

Suddenly she was standing before him, offering him pastries baked in the shape of birds. This Attic girl was taller than most of her kind; that was the first thing that struck him. Though she wore as shapeless a garment as the others, where the cloth draped conveniently he made out the curve of her hips. She was slim; she must be no more than sixteen. Her face, turned respectfully away, was an oval, with prominent cheekbones under flawless skin. Her mouth was small, her lips full. Her coloring was dark, rather like his own family's but this was a girl from the Attic, a place where time ran rapidly, and he wondered if her heart beat faster than his.

As his inspection continued, she looked up, uncertain. Her eyes were a complex gray-blue. When she met his gaze, she gasped, startled, and the dense hot warmth of her breath drew him helplessly.

BoFeri, his elder sister, hissed at him. "Lethe, Peri, take a pastry or let her go. You're making an exhibition of us all."

He came back to himself. BoFeri was right, of course; a funeral was no place to be ogling serving girls. Clumsily he grabbed at a pastry. The girl hurried away, back to the Elevator that would return her to her Attic above the House.

MacoFeri had seen all this, of course. Buta's eldest son sneered, "You really are a spindling's a.r.s.e, Peri. She's an Attic girl. She'll burn out ten times as fast as you. She'll be an old woman before you've started shaving..."

Maco's taunting was particularly hard for Peri to take today. After the ceremony, MacoFeri and BoFeri, as eldest son and daughter, the co-heirs of ButaFeri's estate and the only recipients of his lineage name, would sit down and work out the disposition of Buta's wealth. While Bo had shown no great interest in this responsibility, Maco had made the most of his position. "You love to lord it over me, don't you?" Peri said bitterly. "Well, it won't last forever, Maco, and then we'll see."

Maco blew air through his finely chiseled nostrils. "Your pastry's going cold." He turned away.

Peri broke open the little confection. A living bird, encased in the pastry, was released. As it fluttered up into faster time the beating of its wings became a blur, and it shot out of sight. Peri tried to eat a little of the pastry, but he wasn't hungry, and he was forced to cram the remnants of it into his pocket, to more glares from his siblings.

At last the cortege was ready. Even the Mayor of Foro, a wheezing man as large as ButaFeri, was in his place. Maco and Bo shouted out their father's name and began to pace out of the courtyard. The procession followed in rough order. The spindlings, goaded by their drivers, dipped their long necks and submitted to the labor of hauling the hea.r.s.e; each animal's six iron-shod hooves clattered on the worn tiles.

The road they took traced the managed banks of the river Foo. Rutted and worn, it ran for no more than half a mile from the little township at the base of the cliff and across the Shelf, and even at a respectfully funereal pace the walk would take less than half an hour. As they proceeded, the roar of falling water slowly gathered.

The Shelf was a plateau, narrow here but in places miles wide, that stretched into the mist to left and right as far as Peri could see. Behind the Shelf the land rose in cliffs and banks, up towards mistier heights lost in a blueshifted glare; and before it the ground fell away towards the Lowland. Foro was just one of a number of towns scattered along the Shelf, whose rich soil, irrigated by ancient ca.n.a.ls, was dense with farms. Peri knew that representatives of towns several days' ride away had come to see off Buta today.

At last the hea.r.s.e was drawn up to the very edge of the Shelf. The family took their places beside the carriage. Peri's mother had always had a fear of falling, and her daughters cl.u.s.tered around her to rea.s.sure her. There was another delay as the priest tried to light her ceremonial torch in the damp air.

The edge was a sheer drop where, with a shuddering roar, the river erupted into a waterfall. Reddening as it fell, the water spread out into a great fan that dissipated into crimson mist long before it reached the remote plain far below. The Lowland itself, stretching to a redshifted horizon, was a ma.s.s of deep red, deeper than blood, the light of slow time. But here and there Peri saw flashes of a greater brilliance, a pooling of daylight. There was no sun in the sky of Old Earth; it was the glow of these evanescent ponds of pink-white light, each miles wide, reflecting from high, fast-moving clouds, which gave people day and night, and inspired their crops to grow.

Standing here amid this tremendous spectacle of water and light, and with the stars wheeling through their three-minute days above his head, Peri was rather exhilarated. He felt as if he was cupped in the palm of mighty but benevolent forces forces that made his life and concerns seem trivial, and yet which cherished him even so. This perspective eased the pain of his father's loss.

At last the priest had her torch alight. With a murmuring of respectful words, she touched her fire to the f.a.ggots piled in the carriage around the coffin. Soon flame nuzzled at the box which confined ButaFeri.

Among the f.a.ggots were samples of Buta's papers diaries, correspondence, other records the bulk of which was being torched simultaneously at Buta's home. This erasure was the custom, and a comfort. When the next Formidable Caress came and civilization fell once more, everything would be lost anyhow all painfully acc.u.mulated learning dissipated, all buildings reduced to ruin and it was thought better to destroy these hard-won monuments now rather than leave them to the relentless workings of fate.

For long minutes, family, priest, and crowd watched the fire hopefully. They were waiting for an Effigy to appear, a glimpse of a miracle. The spindlings grazed, indifferent to human sentiment.

And in that difficult moment Peri saw the Attic girl again. Once more she moved through the crowd bearing a tray of steaming drinks, restoratives after the march from Foro. Now she was wearing a dress of some black material that clung languidly to her curves, and her dark hair was tied up so that the sweep of her neck was revealed. Peri couldn't take his eyes off her.

Maco nudged him. "She's changed, hasn't she? It's what, an hour? since you last saw her. But in that time she's been to the Attic and back; perhaps half a day has pa.s.sed for her. And perhaps it's not just her clothes she's changed." He grinned and licked his lips. "At that age these colts can grow rapidly, their little bodies flowing like hot metal. I should know. There was a girl I had, oh, three years ago an old crone by now, no doubt but "

"Leave me alone, Maco."

"I happen to know her name," Maco whispered. "Not that it's any concern of yours not while our father burns in his box."

Peri couldn't help but give him his petty victory. "Tell me."

"Lora. Much good it will do you." Maco laughed and turned away.

There was a gasp from the crowd. A cloud of pale mist burst soundlessly from the burning coffin. It hovered, tendrils and billows pulsing and then, just for a heartbeat, it gathered itself into a form that was recognizably human, a misty sh.e.l.l with arms and legs, torso and head. It was ButaFeri, no doubt about that; his bulk, reproduced faithfully, was enough to confirm it.

Buta's widow was crying. "He's smiling. Can you see? Oh, how wonderful..." It was a marvelous moment. Only perhaps one in ten were granted the visitation of an Effigy at death, and n.o.body doubted that ButaFeri was worthy of such an envoi.

The sketch of Buta lengthened, his neck stretching like a spindling's, becoming impossibly long. Then the distorted Effigy shot up into the blueshifted sky and arced down over the edge of the cliff, hurling itself after the misty water into the flickering crimson of the plain below. It was seeking its final lodging deep in the slow-beating heart of Old Earth, where, so it was believed, something of Buta would survive even the Formidable Caresses.

The watching dignitaries broke into applause, and, the tension released, the party began to break up. Peri did his best within the bounds of propriety to search for the girl Lora, but he didn't glimpse her again that day.

MacoFeri and BoFeri, brother and sister armed with the name of their dead father, went into conclave for two days. They emerged smiling, clearly having decided the fates of their siblings, their mother and the cast of servants in the House and its Attic. But they stayed silent, to PeriAndry's fury; they would take their own sweet time about revealing their decisions to those grateful recipients. Though his uncertainty was thereby prolonged, there was nothing Peri could do about it.

Maco's first independent decision was to organize a wild spindling hunt. He proclaimed the hunt would be a final celebration of his father's life. Despite his own turmoil, Peri could hardly refuse to take part.

A party of a dozen formed up on laden spindlings and galloped off along the Shelf. It was a young group; Maco, at twenty-three, was the oldest of them. He carried a bundle of goodwill letters to hand to the mayors of the towns they pa.s.sed. And he prevailed upon his youngest sister KelaAndry to keep a chart of their travels; the world wasn't yet so well known that there wasn't more to be mapped.

As they rode, the roar of the Foo diminished behind them, and Foro was soon lost in the mist. It would likely take them many days before they even glimpsed their first wild spindling. After the Formidable Caress, it was said, the spindlings had come to graze in the very ruins of the ancient, abandoned towns, and to kill or capture them had been easy; but as the settlements at the foot of the cliff had grown again, the wild spindling herds were harder to find. But the journey itself was pleasant. The party settled into a comfortable monotony of riding, making camp, cooking, sleeping.

Of the dozen who traveled, seven were women, and there was a good deal of badinage and flirting. As early as the second night three couples had formed.

Peri had always been a vigorous, athletic type, and he had hoped that the hunt would take his mind off his own troubles. But he kept himself to himself, by day and by night.

It was not that he was inexperienced. Since the age of fifteen, his father had programmed for him a series of liaisons with local girls. The first had been pretty, compliant, and experienced, Buta's intention being to tutor his son and to build his confidence and prowess. After that had come brighter, tough-minded girls, and subtler pleasures followed as Peri learned to explore relationships with women who were his peers. Though he had formed some lasting friendships, nothing permanent had yet coalesced for him. That was only a matter of time, of course.

The trouble was that now it would not be his father selecting potential mates for him: no, from now on it would be his brother Maco, with perhaps a little advice from Bo. Perhaps the women on this very trip had been invited with that in mind although Peri was sure Maco would sample the wares before allowing his inferior brother anywhere near them.

All this, and the lingering uncertainty over his destiny, was hard to bear. He seemed to lose confidence. He had no desire to mix with the others, had nothing to add to their bantering conversations. And as he lay in his skin sleeping bag, with the warm presence of his favorite spindling close by, Peri found his thoughts returning to Lora, the girl he had glimpsed on the day of his father's funeral.

He hadn't forgotten the surge of helpless longing he had felt as he studied her demure face, her carelessly glimpsed figure. She hadn't said a word to him, or he to her and yet, though she was just a servant, he sensed there had been something between them, as elusive yet as real as an Effigy, there to be explored if only he had the chance. And how he longed for that chance!

In his obsessive imagining, Peri constructed a fantasy future in which he would seek out the girl. He would show her his life, perhaps fill in the inevitable gaps in her learning though not too quickly; he rather liked the idea of impressing her with his worldliness. They would grow together, but not through any seduction or displays of wealth: their Effigies would call to each other, as the saying had it. At last they would cement their love, and much of his detailed imagining centered on that that.

After that, well, he would present their liaison to his family as an accomplished fact. He would ride out their predictable objections, claim his inheritance, and begin his life with Lora ... At that point things got a bit vague.

It was all impossible, of course. There were few hard and fast laws in Foro; the community was too young for that, but it went against all custom for a Shelf man to consort with an Attic servant, save for pure pleasure. But for Peri, a romance with Lora would bring none of the complication of his liaisons with women from the town, none of the unwelcome overlay of inheritance and familial alliance and none of his brother's gleeful manipulation, for this would be Peri's own choice.

Elaborating this comforting fantasy made the days and nights of the hunt easier to bear. Or at least that was so before Maco, with almost preternatural acuity, figured out what he was thinking.

It was a bright morning, a couple of weeks after the hunters had set off. They were running down a small herd of wild spindlings, perhaps a score of the animals including foals. Here the Shelf was heavily water-carved, riddled with gullies and banks, and the southern cliffs were broken into round-shouldered hills. The party was galloping at top speed, their spare mounts galumphing after them, and they raised a curtain of dust that stretched across the Shelf.

The spindlings' six-legged running looked clumsy, but was surprisingly effective, a mixture of a loping run with leaps forward powered by the back pair of legs. The spindlings' six-limbed body plan was unlike those of most of Old Earth's land animals, including humans. But then, so it was said, the spindlings' ancestors had not come from Earth. Unladen, the wild spindlings were naturally faster than their hunters' mounts, but, panicking, they would soon run themselves out.

Maco rode alongside Peri. He yelled across, "So how's my little brother this morning?"

"What do you want, Maco?"

Maco was very like his father when young dark, handsome, forceful but already he showed traces of Buta's corpulence in his fleshy jowls. "We've been talking about you. You're keeping yourself to yourself, aren't you? Head full of dreams as usual not that there's room in there for much else. The thing is, I think I know what you've been dreaming about. That serving girl at the funeral. Lora Lora. Your tongue has been hanging out ever since..." He clenched his fist and made obscene pumping motions. "Is she keeping you warm in your sack?"

"You're disgusting," Peri said.

"Oh, don't be a hypocrite. You know, you're a good hunter, PeriAndry, but you've a lot to learn. I think you will learn, though. You're certainly going to have plenty of opportunity."

Peri hauled on his reins to bring his spindling to a clattering halt. Maco, startled, rode on a few yards before pulling up and trotting back. Their two panting beasts dipped their long dusty heads and nuzzled each other.

Peri, furious now, said, "If you're talking of my inheritance, then tell me straight. I'm tired of your games."

Maco laughed. "You're not a very good sport, little brother."

Peri clenched his fists. "I'll drag you off that nag and show you what a good sport I am."

Maco held up his hands. "All right, all right. Your inheritance, then: in fact, it's one reason I organized this hunt to show you what I'm giving you."

"What do you mean?"

Maco swept his arm wide. "All the land you see here, across the width of the Shelf all this belonged to Buta. Our father bought the land as a speculation from a landowner in Puul, the last town, half a day back. Right now it's got nothing much to offer but wild spindlings and scrub gra.s.s..."

"And this will be mine," Peri said slowly.

"It's a good opportunity," Maco said earnestly. "There's plenty of water in the area. Some of these gullies may actually be irrigation channels, silted up and abandoned. Good farming land perhaps not for our generation, but certainly our children. You could establish a House, set up an Attic in those hills. You could make your mark here, Peri."

"This is a dismal place. My life will be hauling rocks and breaking dirt. And we're fourteen days' ride from home."

"This will be your home," Maco said. As he spoke of Peri's inheritance, Maco had seemed to grow into his role, sounding masterful, even wise. But now a brother's taunts returned, sly, digging under Peri's skin. "Perhaps you could bring your little serving girl. She can make you pastries all day and let you hump her all night..." will be your home," Maco said. As he spoke of Peri's inheritance, Maco had seemed to grow into his role, sounding masterful, even wise. But now a brother's taunts returned, sly, digging under Peri's skin. "Perhaps you could bring your little serving girl. She can make you pastries all day and let you hump her all night..."

Peri blurted out, "It is only custom which keeps me from her."

Maco let his jaw drop. "Hey you aren't serious about this foal, are you?"

"Why should I not be?"

Maco said harshly, "Kid, she lives in the Attic. Up there, for every day that pa.s.ses for you, ten or twelve pa.s.s for her. Already months have gone by for her ... I know from experience: those Attic girls are sweet, but they turn to dust in your hands, until you can't bear to look at them. Already your Lora must be ageing, that firm body sagging..."

If it had gone on a minute longer Peri might have lost control, even struck his brother, and the consequences would have been grave. But there were cries from across the plain. Peri saw that the party had backed the family of spindlings into a dry gully. Grateful for an excuse to get away, Peri spurred his mount into motion.

The spindlings, cornered, cl.u.s.tered together. There were more than a dozen adults, perhaps half as many colts. They seemed helpless as the hunters closed their circle.

But then four of the adults craned their necks high in the air, and their heads, three yards above their bodies, turned rapidly. With a whinny the four broke together, clattering up the gully's dusty wall. The movement was so sudden and coordinated they cut through the hunters' line and escaped.

The spindlings' long necks were an evolutionary response. On Old Earth, time pa.s.sed more rapidly the higher you went, a few percent for each yard. The spindlings were not native to Earth, but they had been here more than a million years, long enough for natural selection to work. That selection had favored tall animals: with their heads held high, the longer-necked were able to think just a little faster and, over time, that margin of a few percent offered a survival advantage. Now these accelerated adults had abandoned the young, the old and feeble, but they would live to breed again.

The young hunters didn't care about evolutionary strategies. The aged adults made easy meat, and the captured youngsters could be broken and tamed. The hunters closed in, stabbing spears and ropes at the ready. Already they sang of the feast they would enjoy tonight.

But PeriAndry did not sing. He had made up his mind. Before the night came, he would leave the party. Perhaps this desolate stretch of remote scrubland was his destiny, but he was determined to explore his dreams first and to achieve that he had to return home.

It took Peri just ten days to ride back to Foro. Each day he drove on as long as he could, until exhaustion overtook him or his mounts.

When he got home, he spoke to his mother briefly, only to rea.s.sure her of the safety of the rest of the hunting party, then retired to his room for the night.

His sister BoFeri insisted on seeing him, though, and she briskly extracted the truth of what he intended.

"Listen to me," she said. "We're different stock, we folk of the Shelf, from the brutes of the Attic, and similar lofty slums. Time moves at a stately pace here and that means it has had less opportunity to work on us." She prodded his chest. "We are the ones who are truest to our past we are the closest to the original stock of Old Earth. The Attic folk have been warped, mutated by too much time. Think about it those rattling hearts, the flickering of their purposeless generations! The Attic folk aren't human as we are. Not even the pretty ones like Lora. Good for tupping, yes, but nothing more..." are the ones who are truest to our past we are the closest to the original stock of Old Earth. The Attic folk have been warped, mutated by too much time. Think about it those rattling hearts, the flickering of their purposeless generations! The Attic folk aren't human as we are. Not even the pretty ones like Lora. Good for tupping, yes, but nothing more..."

"I don't care what you say, Bo, or Maco."

Her face was a mixture of his mother's kindness with Maco's hard mockery. "It is adolescent to have crushes on Attic serving girls. You are evading your responsibilities, Peri; you are escaping into fantasy. You are so immature!"

"Then let me grow up in my own way."