A group from Settlement One had gathered beneath the trees halfway between the first-discovered mounds and the Departed village. Sal Girat was there, with Africa and China Wilm, and Theor Close, who had brought the word from Sam. Vastly pregnant, China crouched among her friends and kinfolk, weeping over Sam.
“Gone off like that,” she cried. “Sacrificing himself! For what?”
“Nonsense,” said Sal. “That’s not what he’s doing at all. Sacrifice isn’t necessary. You know that.” The words had come out automatically, without thought, but she stopped with her mouth still open, stricken with a moment of total recall, a visionary episode so vivid it was as though she lived it rather than merely remembering it. She was seeking an Old One, one of the Departed, crouched against the wall in a tiny, circular house. Sal was so close she could smell his earthy, slightly acrid smell. A linguist was crouched beside the Old One and had just asked, “Is sacrifice necessary?”
“Necessary?” scratched the Old One with horny tentacles. “Necessary to what? Is life necessary? No, sacrifice is not necessary. It is a way. A convenience. A kindness.”
Sal shut her mouth, which was suddenly dry. “Sam wouldn’t do anything foolish,” she said. “He isn’t a foolish man.”
China stared at the firelit towers and asked herself if that were true. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he a foolish man? Wanting that one perfect thing, whatever it was. The absolute. The marvelous. Playing about in helmet and sandals. Pretending to be all those ancient warriors. What was he doing now? What was he questing for?
She put her face into her hands and went on weeping, feeling the first stirring of birth, the first uncontrollable surges of her own body taking charge of things. “The baby’s coming,” she gasped to Africa. “Sam’s baby. Right now.”
Africa frowned at her choice of words. The baby could not be called Sam’s baby, not in any well-managed society, but Africa did not take time to argue. Instead, she moved swiftly and efficiently to attend to matters, sending someone in search of a medical tech while she herself considered what she might use for a tent to make a private space around them.
Sal held China’s hand, wondering bleakly if this birth might be a trade-off, a life for a life.
• On the plains below, some distance to the west, Sam walked toward the line of soldiers, where the prophets were, where his father would be found.
“Phaed,” Sam sang, not melodiously, rather a keening hum, a way of keeping his goal in the forefront of his mind. “Phaed,” whom he was being allowed to meet once more, in order that all things should be resolved between them. Phaed: wife-murderer, woman-killer, culprit of the Cause, one of the Faithful, faithful indeed, to the most ancient and bloody of all religions. Me-worship. My sex-worship. My tribe-worship. My kind-worship. Vowing rage and destruction against all else.
“Phaed.” Dream-dad, fable-father, king and hero, lost somewhere in Sam’s childhood and never found again. Was it a voice he remembered, from before he was six, a whispering voice telling tales before the fire while ochre light gleamed on the eyeballs to show that sly knowingness, that virile intelligence, which meant a more-than-human creature hunched beside the fire, lord-fox, king-wolf, great-bear. Prowler in the dark. Inhabiter of dreams. Troll-papa.
Did he come with a mask, father-player, full of false jollity, mirth made manifest, mockery falling from his lips like apples into Sam’s lap? Tell me, Dad. Tell me the story of when you murdered Maechy. Tell me about those times you worshipped your god with blood, those times you killed, mutilated, raped, tore.
“Phaed.”
Was it a face he remembered? Was there a face there, anywhere? Eyes with a certain look of pride at a son’s first words, first steps, a son’s finger on the trigger of his first weapon. Was it weapons he remembered? Only in play, the finger pointing, stick pointing, noise of rat-a-tat, immemorial childplay at killing. Maybe it was that sound he thought of, Phaed’s sound, in the night, rat-a-tat, killing something.
Was it a smell he longed for? The smell of semen and smoke, the smell of whiskey and sweat, the sour, oldsoapless smell of men who spent too much time together in closed rooms, socks and shoes full of that smell, trousers stiff with it, so old it wasn’t merely smell anymore but more a miasma, rising ectoplasmic, a living presence, melting on the tongue like a thick syrup of old cheese.
Was it that licked-up smell? Sickening and yet strong, strong as stones.
Was it a touch? Could he even remember a touch? A stroke, a pat, a hug. Blows aplenty, shoves, a closed fist knocking his thin, boy’s shoulder, a hard hand aimed in a butt-swat, a knuckle knocking the skull door open, boring into a cheek like an auger, painful as truth.
None of the above. Not smell, sight, sound, taste, touch. What, then? What memory of him pervaded, haunted, kept Sam wondering after all this time?
“Phaed?”
Sam had to know. Sam had to know him again, ask him, perhaps, look at him with these new eyes to see beyond the old veils. Only when he had finished with this could he go on, on—to whatever. To a future if there was a future. To an end if there was to be an end.
Before either, Sam had to find him, there, somewhere, behind the clanking, monstrousness of the soldiers, filing endlessly past.
“What are the acceptable names of God?”
“Almighty, All Knowing, All Wise.”
“Who were the peoples of God?”
“Ire and Iron and Voorstod.”
The great metal soldier shouted with laughter and spun a knife at the end of a tentacle. “Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ire and Iron and Voorstod. Ha, ha, ha, ha.” It leaned forward, poked Sam in the chest with a jointed, jawed extension. “Ire and Iron and Voorstod.”
“I know,” said Sam, inadequately. He did know. Phaed had told him, chained him up in the old maternity home and told him, for hours at a time. Ire and Iron and Voorstod, the three peoples who had followed Voorstod the prophet away from Manhome. Voorstod with its pastors, Ire with its priests, and Iron with its prophets: the first to rule the slaves, the second to rule the women, the last to rule the men—to rule the men, or to be used by the men, to rule. That had always been the way of men’s Gods, old men’s Gods. To use the Gods to rule.
“Ire and Iron and Voorstod,” cried the soldier, striding into the east.
Sam shivered and went on. Far to his left he saw a prophet stalking along, long legs like pistons, face hard as steel, his staff striking the ground, sending up little puffs of dust. He was too far away to see, yet Sam saw him. A prophet stalking, following the soldiers, ready to witness destruction.
“Tell me,” Sam said conversationally, “if you had no enemies, how would you live? If you had no predators abroad in the night, no fanged creatures ready to seize your lambs, how would you live? What purpose would your life have?”
“Ire,” cried a great soldier, stamping its feet to make the ground shake.
“Iron,” cried another.
The battle cry of the prophets. Sam had heard it before, that night in Scaery, when the Green-snake people and the Forest-bird people had paraded through the streets and the prophets had driven them away with trumpets and cries and quotations from the Scriptures. Old rage, never allowed to cool. Old hatred, never allowed to mend. For these were the fires from which they drew their heat. Without them, they were nothing.
Had Phaed quoted Scriptures when Sam was a child? Could he remember Phaed at all? In the kitchen among the food smells? Waking in the morning? Combing his hair? With all that hair, he must have combed it sometimes, perhaps in the warmth of rare, sunny afternoons, in the grassy plot beside the house, where the herbs grew against the wall and the hummers made soft noises in the flowers.
He could remember Maire there, combing her hair, but not Phaed. Where could he remember Phaed?
He could not find the look of the man in memory. The presence, yes, but the man, no. The presence—like Almighty, All Knowing, All Wise Himself, hovering, aware, threatening dreadful punishments—but not the man. The feel of the striki
ng fist, the boring knuckle, but not the man.
There had been a time he had heard Phaed’s voice. There had to have been a time. Maire saying something, something about needing. And the man, unseen, saying, “A man doesn’t need anybody.” Ire, and Iron, and Voor-stod, and a man doesn’t need anybody. Anything.
The speaker not seen. A voice in the night, voices, raised, and the sound of pain. And the man, like God everywhere, but elsewhere in the dark, always elsewhere, in the dark. Old men’s religions and old men’s legends, always elsewhere, in the dark, so they could not be seen too clearly. So they could not be examined too closely. So they could go on, breeding, fulminating, burning, and rotting in the dark.
He had never thought of Phaed as living in the daytime. He was like the night creatures who came from their burrows at dusk. “Deep,” Maire had said. “Deep and black as the tomb, with the stones around and over them.”
“I was only six,” said Sam to himself, explaining to himself what that meant. What you can see when you are six is only what you can see, hands, mostly. And knees. Faces are above you if they do not kneel down. Phaed never knelt down.
Where are you, Phaed?
Far to the right the Awateh and two of his sons went by, the Awateh moving like an automaton, short steps, head trembling upon his neck, like a mechanical toy, jerk, jerk. Sam was upon the hill; they were upon the flat. He did not call to them. They did not see him, but walked on, into the east.
Why hadn’t they seen him?
Because their eyes were fixed on something else?
Sam stood, unmoving, then turned slowly around to look behind him.
Green snake and forest bird, flame fish and shelled beast, hill gant and valley slithe, purple and scarlet and mauve and blue, dancing ahead of the soldiers, ahead of the prophets, leading them on into the east, rising up out of the ground like smoke, forming in the air as from mist, shadow connecting to luminescence connecting to shadow. The Tchenka of the Gharm? The long-ago Gods of man? Marvel and mystery and joy and voices singing ecstatically between the stars.
“I know,” said a voice within Sam’s hearing. “I know what Maire knew.”
And Maire’s voice, singing as he had not heard it since he was a child. Like a prophet bird, a voice of God.
“Your Gods too, Samasnier Girat!”
And they were there, beside him, striding away, leading the prophets away, men in armor and high-crested helmets, waving swords and banners, shouting their battle cries. “Legends,” cried Theseus. “All the legends.” Battle hymns. Choruses crying war.
Theseus stooped above him, slender and strong, his hairless skin gleaming like bronze, a sword in his hand, sandals on his feet, a marble man, a monument come to life. “I raised up the stone, Sam. Beneath it were these sandals, this sword. I found my heritage. Now, I’m on my way to find my father.”
“I,” said Sam with a sob. “I, too.”
“Then the killing can begin,” cried the marble man, stepping over him and stopping to look under a stone. “Under here,” he cried. “Perhaps under here.”
“You’ve already found it,” Sam cried. “You needn’t go on! You’ve already found it!”
“Perhaps,” cried the marble man, “under the next stone. Or the one after that.”
Sam left him behind, still turning over boulders, still peering at the darkness beneath. “Phaed,” he said. More than any other legend, more than any tie with the past or the future, this one, this tie of the cells, this claim of the bone, this seeking hunger of the heart. “Phaed.”
“What freedom does my faith give me?” bellowed a huge, armored thing on multiple wheels, its torso rearing skyward over a tangle of blades.
“The freedom to hate!” cried Sam. “The freedom to kill what I hate.”
And what do I hate? he asked himself, knowing the answer, for Saturday Wilm had told him the answer.
I hate what I fear.
What do I fear?
“Phaed!” he called into the thunderous night. “Phaed.”
• On the height, the lengthening towers had reached the limit of their growth. The curious chemical smell had grown into a stench that drove the people from it, sneezing and choking. China Wilm, laboring in childbirth, identified the smell and the chemical that gave it off as the curious product of certain fungi. “Gyromitra,” she murmured, between pains. “False morels. That’s the class of fungus upon Mahome. We have related species in the mushroom house. They can only be eaten after we boil away the rocket fuel.”
“Rocket fuel?” Africa asked her, mockingly, thinking she was delirious, or joking.
“I’m serious,” cried China. “They secrete mono-methyl-hydrazine. The same stuff used in chemical probes. We boil it away when we process the fungus. This must be a similar species …” and she was panting again.
“Where’s the smell coming from,” Africa asked the children.
“The base of the towers,” said Saturday. “Inside the grills, there’s this strange twisty growth, all tubes and wrinkled, like brains.
“Get people away from here,” cried China. “That stuff is poison.”
The smell had already driven people away. They moved restlessly, gathering up their belongings and shifting about, like disturbed bees.
Clouds gathered overhead. It was not the rainy season. Clouds were not unheard of at this time, but they were rare. Still, the light of the stars was covered over, and the dull mutter of thunder began to roll across the highlands.
Young people who had been exploring came to Saturday, and she to her mother. “Over past the village, there are several mound-temples without any towers in the middle. There’s no bad smell there, either. The others say they’ve got tight roofs, and this looks like a longtime rain.
Africa glared at the lowering skies and agreed. The first hard drops of rain were already falling, hitting her face like ice. She and the Wilm brothers, trailed by the other evacuees, carried China through the Departed village, past the little ruined temples, and into a space where several mound complexes had ramified into doughnut-shaped structures with no towers. In these structures, the roofs ended at the central shaft and the central grills were tightly woven with leafy flaps, like shutters to let the air in or out. People moved hesitantly along the arches, found the space warm and welcoming, laid claim to sections of padded floor, then curled on the curving floors like fragile worms in a nutshell, safe, for the moment, from what was happening.
Everyone knew something was happening, though they did not know what. Dern Blass knew. Spiggy, sitting with his back against an arch, listening as the rain pounded on the false-thatch above him. Zilia, rocking a baby who was frightened of the echoes. Jamice, squatting on the pseudo-carpet, turning a Phansuri spirit rod between her fingers, as though in meditation. China, panting behind the screens Africa had rigged. Sal and Harribon, sitting side-by-side, holding hands. In each of their minds, as in every other settler, there had opened a vacancy, not so much a hole as a screen, like a white page, waiting for a message to be written upon it. The screen covered the place terror came from. Terror couldn’t get through it. The people knew this and were grateful for it. They were attentive to the vacancy. It was there that they would find the final words. Either the Gods would give them words to let them live, or the Gods would help them die. The Gods themselves did not know which. This thing had never been done before. The Gods didn’t know whether it would work, whether there was time. Whatever happened, the end would come into their minds upon that waiting blankness.
“I should be doing something,” fretted Harribon.
Sal looked at him, and he flushed. It was only habit, his saying that. There was nothing he or anyone else could do. Still, here and there among the circled masses, there were those who said it, men mostly. “I should be doing … something …”
Thunder came, an enormous shouting of sky and a cracking of split air. Saturday and Jep were at the entrance with a dozen others, seeing what they could see. Several of the great chimneys we
re within sight, several with lightning striking at their tops, again and again. Burning lines, like glowing fuses, ran down from the tops of the towers. Then there was fire and smoke and a roiling haze and a contained thunder.
“Come see,” cried Jep to Theor Close. “They’re going off like guns!” Guns he knew. Guns he had seen, in old dramas.
Theor came to see. Certainly something had been, was being propelled up the gigantic barrels and out into the sky. High above the edge of the escarpment, they could see the missiles exploding, making a spreading shadow across the night sky. Lightning appeared green behind the haze, vividly green, like new grass. Saturday ran to tell her mother.
“What’s happening,” panted China.
“The towers are going off like big guns,” Africa told her. “Shooting something up into the sky.”
“Using the MMH as a propellant,” China muttered. “What set it off?”
“Lightning,” said her sister. “Lightning hits the tops of the towers and then runs down the side as though there were a fuse there.”
“Probably is,” gasped China. “A line of oxygen-rich, punky tissue, perhaps even tissue laced with the propellant fuel.”
“What is it firing off? Seeds?”
“Spore cases,” China murmured. “Probably.” Then she had no time to say anything more, as she and the med-tech struggled to let a seemingly reluctant child come forth into the world which might survive barely long enough to receive it.
• When the last of the Central Management people had departed for the heights, they had left the Baidee prisoners behind to comfort themselves with a final word from Dern Blass.
“Consider your sentence interrupted. You can go back to Thyker through your Door, the way you came.”
Since every member of Churry’s group knew that the Combat Door, which they had disassembled and moved to CM as their first act upon reaching Hobbs Land, was losing about twenty percent of its shipments on a random basis, the Baidee decided to put off escaping through it until the last possible minute. They did draw lots for the order of escape, so there would be no confusion when the time came. Their only alternative action, self-defense, depended upon their being furnished with weapons. They had already sent a dozen pleas to Thyker, one after the other, hoping at least one would get through. Now they repeated the exercise. It would have been wiser, they all knew, to be somewhere else, but if they were somewhere else, they couldn’t use the Door.