I was not the epitome of aplomb during this moment, exactly, myself. I went over to one of the divans, and pulled up a sheet. It was made of silk. I looked for some fabric that would sop up water better, but there did not seem to be anything in the whole chamber aside from silk and satin. I would have offered her my jacket, but it was under my mail.
I draped the silk bedsheet around her shoulders, cursing myself inwardly for being too cowardly to let my hand linger in the softly-wonderful-shoulder-hugging position for just one more nanosecond. I also did not want to loom over her, but then again I did not want to sit next to her, because you just cannot have a serious conversation with a girl when you can see too much of her. When is the last time you had a deep, philosophical conversation with a Hooter’s waitress?
Next I thought it might be better to loom after all, but then I realized my groin would be right in front of her eyes, and I would have to look down her cleavage again to talk to her. I decided on a knightly compromise. I knelt.
She must have been shorter than I thought, because even with her kneeling on the bench and me on one knee next to it, my eyes were above her shoulder level.
2. The Tree of Life
Penny softly thanked me when I draped the silk around her shoulders. Water stains ruined it immediately, but I figure the cleaning bill would come out of the Dark Tower’s housekeeping budget, so what did I care?
She used a corner to mop unsuccessfully at her hair, but then she gave up on it, and hugged the silken sheet around her, and she looked like a little girl just out of the sea lost in a too-large beach blanket: a pyramid of soft, shining fabric leading up to a wet blonde head.
“So why are you … dressed … like that?” I asked her.
She said, “It’s tradition. Didn’t you watch Return of the Jedi? Female captives get stuck in skimpy outfits and chains.” Then she shivered, and I don’t think it was from the cold and wet. She huddled in on herself, a haunted look to her.
I said, “Enmeduranki told me what they planned to do to you. I am here to prevent that from happening.”
Penny was obviously the kind of girl who does not know how to take being rescued, because all she did was utter a bitter little laugh, and say, “I can prevent it at any time. I need only walk out yonder door, and have the collar pinch my head off. Everything will be prevented.”
“Suicide is wrong,” I said.
“Not on my world,” she said primly. “The school of sea-daughters has a code…”
“It’s wrong on every world,” I said flatly. “And so is giving in to despair. Suicide insults every world, since it rejects everything life on any Earth offers, and rejects any future life as well. It’s just wrong, there is no argument, and it is not something anyone gets to debate about, or vote on.”
She looked at me sidelong. “You speak of a sin you yourself cannot commit.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that, so I scowled.
“But, come, let us discuss brighter matters! What would you like to know about your origin?” she asked.
“Everything. I take it my dad isn’t my father.”
“He found you as a child, thrown into a ditch or lake by your mother.”
“Thrown into a what? How would you know that?”
“Because all children of your world are treated like that. To throw one of you in a ditch will not kill you, nor will being deprived of your mother’s milk, nor will starvation, nor will isolation. The reason why the Undying throw their immortal get into lakes is to smother their cries. You are unusual for your kind since you were fed milk at a young age, so your body and brain developed normally.”
I tried to imagine a world where all babies were simply tossed into the nearest pond, and found I could not do it.
“How can they grow up if they don’t eat?” I said.
“About age seven, the children are usually large enough to catch food.”
“Large enough how? I mean, just a matter of physics, conservation of mass and all that jazz, how do they grow if they are not able to feed themselves?”
“I don’t know where the mass comes from. I suspect it is ylem, from a fourth dimension beyond the three our senses perceive. Of course, if the young ones stuff leaves or bark or gravel into their stomach to quiet the hunger pangs, that will not kill them either. But typically their brains do not develop, since they lack human company.”
“A whole world of feral children?” I sniffed, and stood up, nerves on edge. There was a smell of blood coming from somewhere.
Penny said, “Their history branched off at a point before the confusion of tongues. Any feral child who hears the Ur language, which is the primordial tongue, understands it. How and why their minds understand the words and concepts behind them, that I don’t know. It only takes a few afternoons of conversation, and they can speak as well as …”
“…Tarzan?”
“I was going to say Caliban, but the idea is the same.”
“What show is he on? I don’t recognize the character’s name.”
Penny smiled impishly, raising both eyebrows. “He is the short fellow from Fantasy Island.”
I put my hand on my scabbard and pushed the hilt with my thumb, exposing about a half inch of blade. I adjusted the angle of the scabbard carefully and wrapped my fingers around the hilt, keeping my pinky and ring finger tense, thumb and forefinger loose, so that I could draw a correct quickdraw. I did not draw the sword yet, since it is not to be drawn except to kill. But I was looking left and right around the chamber, wondering where the smell came from.
I walked around the bench where she sat, and talked over my shoulder. “I thought his name was Nick Nack.”
“You’re thinking of the Bond movie. I am talking about the TV show from the 70s.”
“The one with Khan Noonien Singh?”
“He played Prospero the Magician. Though the show did not call him that.”
I glanced at her. She had slithered from kneeling to curled-up position, and rested her arms on the back of the bench, and her cheek on her arms. It looked adorable, and I wanted to kiss her. But I could not tell if she were kidding me or not. Her expression was what I would call enigmatic, if I was sure what that word meant.
Penny said, “You are probably wondering how the children learn the power of immortality from your world.”
Actually, I’d been wondering if I pretended to drown, whether she would give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
I stopped my soft, nervous walk around the bench and stared at her, thunderstruck with the realization that I could not pretend to drown in front of this girl, not ever. She knows I can’t die. Even if I said a snake had bitten my tongue, I could not trick her into sucking the poison out. Because poison could not kill me either.
Penny smiled. “Ah! I see the thought has touched you deeply!”
“Ah—yes—” I muttered, not looking into her eyes.
She said, “It is simple. The mothers of any child have the Fruit from the Tree of Life, or some juice of it, or sauce, ready to place in the mouth of the infant the moment the joys of motherhood wane, and she wishes not to suckle.”
I remembered that no one ever looks up in ninja movies, which is where the ninja is always hiding. Unless he is hiding in the sand underfoot, of course. So I craned my neck, looking up and down, sniffing.
Meanwhile, I was holding up my side of the conversation. “Did you say the Fruit of the Tree of — what? Like from Genesis?”
Maybe she nodded, since I heard her wet hair rustle, but I was not looking at her. Something near the top of the dome looked odd.
Penny said, “Your true home is the first world to split off. You know that it requires a supernatural intervention to make a split?”
“A miracle? Yeah.”
“In all other worlds, the Highest God, Dela, drove the first parents of the world out from the gardens of delight where the Golden Apples of Life shine, and established wardens to bar the way of return, celestial soldiers with swords of ever-bu
rning flame, and the great serpent Ladon, with his triple tongues of fire. The tree is watered and tended by the Hesperides maidens, whose mistress is Ydune.”
“I heard it was Cherubs with bazookas or something, but I got the picture. We have that myth on my world.” Then I bit my tongue. The girl who had just been joshing me about television shows knew the Bible stories.
Looking up, I realized what was wrong.
3. The Smell of Death
What was wrong was that the upper cloud of sawdust lighting the room had taken on a slightly different color. It was darker, reddish.
Something like a very slow cloud of dark red dust particles was drifting down from on high, silent and ominous as a crimson sunset.
I flared my nostrils and squinted my eyes, every sense straining upward. The scent of blood, the smell of a newly dead body, was coming from the sawdust. Mingled with the odor of wood of a carpenter’s shop, was the hint of the odor of a butcher’s shop.
Penny said, “It is no myth, but true history. The garden is north of Ethiopia, in Eritrea nigh to the sea, or was. The world of your birth is the one where the supernatural intervention drawing the celestial soldiers down from heaven and arming them invincibly with swords of terrible fire never took place. Man put out his hand to take of the Tree of Life, and so he cannot die.”
This distracted me from the darkening chamber dome overhead. I looked down and looked at her face to see if she was kidding me. She looked serious. (Looked seriously adorable with a serious look on her face. Do I need to mention that?)
“But—why do they throw their babies away?” I said. “Why isn’t their world, I dunno, a utopia? Everyone lives a thousand years and more, they all learn everything there is to know, they get wise and mature—and no one can kill each other, so why worry about anything?”
She said, “Because it was not good men and women who become immortal, but the ones who ate not once, but again and again from that next tree which grows hard by the tree of gold, the dark tree of death, the tree of occult knowledge.”
“Ah—that is not what we call it. Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
“Call it rather the Knowledge of Obedience and Disobedience! It is the Tree of Lost Innocence, whatever it is called. The bliss all men remember, if only in tales, we remember from before that fatal taste of forbidden root stained all the generations of Man.”
“Root? Don’t you mean fruit?”
“It was a tea made from the root of the tree of hidden knowledge.”
“I thought it was an apple?”
“No,” she said, “The apples grow on the other tree. This one was a willow.”
“The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is a willow tree?”
“So says the lore of my people. It comes from the wise giants, the Nart, who instructed the first parents of the Sea People.”
“I am sure your Nart-lore is dead accurate,” I said with a straight face, “Why is the world named Cainem?”
“It is the world where Cain buried Abel alive, but could not slay him, and the crops which grew up drinking his blood were haunted, and pulled up their roots, and gathered together on the moonless midnight before All Saints’ Day to pull from the cursed soil Abel again. Abel went stalking after Cain where he slumbered, and the trees, wrapped in shadow, walked with him, rustling.”
“Freaky. But I thought Abel was a good guy.”
“Perhaps at first he was. But time did not strengthen him, not in a deathless world where no one goes to heaven, and the suffering of life has no end.”
“Uh. But the pleasures never end either. Don’t they?”
“Worldly pleasures always pale and wane. Do you enjoy the last swig of the last bottle of six as much as the first sip of the first? Do you think even Solomon with his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines was as pleased with the kiss of the last lass in line as with his first? Whereas fresh pain is undulled by time.”
“All pleasures? They get tired of everything?”
“They have no love, and so have no true pleasure. The only thing of which they do not tire is sadism and bloodshed. It jolts their jaded nerves.”
“Sounds like hell. But they have eternal life!”
“Eternal life without hope is not life,” Penny continued. “In such a world women do not need men to survive. Survival is unavoidable! With no bonds between the sexes, there is no marriage, therefore no families, no bands, no clans, no tribes, no brotherhood, no civilization. They have no human feelings left. Every man there is as Cain toward his brother, and they bear the mark you bear, which forbids that men should slay them. The hopeless centuries grind all light slowly out from their hearts.”
“If they have no families, then how are babies born?”
“Rape.”
“But wouldn’t any group that formed a tribe find itself advantaged over all the other scattered people?”
“Advantaged for what advantage? They have no need to increase their numbers.”
“I don’t know! Building houses, getting out of the snow, having a blanket made of mastodon fur?”
“Ah! This world was never flooded by any Deluge. The gardenlands of paradise are still available for them to dwell. There is fruit in abundance, which only the younger ones bother eating. None there do hunt nor keep herds. There is no snow in those latitudes.”
“They run around naked?”
“Of course not. They clothe themselves in leaves of fig, or garments woven of their own hair, which grows as long as they wish as swiftly as they wish, since it follows their will.”
“But if the mothers do not care about their children—”
“And why should they, if the children are children born of rape?”
“—Well, it’s not the baby’s fault who the father is. But, that’s not my question. Why bother feeding the babies the Magic Applejuice of Life, if these people have no human feelings left?”
“The Dark Spirit who rules that land makes certain no child still mortal dies there, lest the child’s shade be saved alive and snatched up to the heaven above the heavens.”
“If no one dies, and women stay fertile throughout their infinite lifetimes, why isn’t their world hip-deep in humans?”
“War.”
“How can they have war if they don’t have death?”
“Their implements of war are truncheons made from their own unbreakable bones: and the result of war is to bury the vanquished alive, and pile rocks upon the unquiet body. And so the land does indeed have people beneath it, even if it is not hip deep. When many stir at once, there is an earthquake.”
“Who is this Dark Spirit who rules there?”
Then I felt a weird sensation. Someone behind me was listening closely. It was as if someone or something was reaching across my shoulder, straining to hear what Penny was about to say.
I whirled, and looked behind. There was no one there but the fifty or so slave-girls, who had not moved from where they huddled, except to flinch at my sudden motion.
I looked up again. The cloud of red was clearly visible now, hanging along the curve of the dome, keeping to the shadows, hovering away from the brighter sawdust. I did not draw Dancing Maiden because I did not see a target. But the cloud was spreading.
It was watching me. Don’t ask me how I knew. It was just a feeling in the pit of my stomach like lead, like insects made of ice crawling across my flesh.
Without taking my eyes from the spreading cloud, I said softly, “Penny. Don’t look up. Something just came into the room through the tiny vent holes that let the glow-in-the-dark sawdust in. Can you send those girls some place safer? Out of this chamber?”
4. Dangersense
Penny stood up in a slither of silk, her face pale and motionless as ice. For once, she did not look sexy to me; she looked like she was scared to death and needed help. She spoke without moving her lips. “I did not think there was another one of you in this world. With everything being readied for the invasion of Albion, I thought — never mind! I
cannot tell you where he might hear. And I must not fall alive into his hands.”
I pretended I had a booger or something on my nose, so that I could scrape my shoulder against my face without taking my hands off Dancing Maiden. While my mouth was hidden, I muttered, “He who? I can take him.”
“Your brother,” she whispered.
“Dobrin? Alexei?”
“No, one of your kind. One you cannot defeat.”
I snorted. “Oh really? Just watch me.”
“He’s like you. Unkillable. You. Can’t. Win.”
“Will you kiss me if I do?”
Her eyes flickered with anger and her voice was cold as she glared at me. “Your infatuation is what put me in this danger! This is serious!”
“You think I ain’t serious about that kiss?” I demanded.
I flicked my eyes toward the red cloud. It was still hanging high, coating the sides of the dome, reaching down very slowly with arms of smoke, like rusty poison seeping into a wineglass. “What is he waiting for?” I wondered aloud. “How can he see us?”
Then I knew. That sense of being watched, that creepy feeling like spiders crawling up my spine; it was the same ghostly sensation I had gotten during that one moment when I had felt and could move my severed hand. In my mind, sort of as a joke, I dubbed it “The Quickening” but when they make the movie version of my life, they’ll have to call it something else, to avoid copyright issues. It should really have a cool pseudoscientific name, like teleproprioception, but for now let’s call it weird-beard freak-o-nightmare sensation.
I said, very softly to her. “My spidey senses are tingling. He’s curious. He wants to know — something.”
Penny drew a deep breath, and said loudly, “The Dark Spirit that rules your world! No doubt you are desperately eager to know the secret of how one of your kind, the Lalilummutillut can overcome and usurp his power, and become supreme of your world?”
“Ah — Am I? I mean, yes! Yes, I am! Supreme in my world? Sign me up!”
The dark red stain was now traveling down the dome, reaching with its many arms of smoke. But when I said that, it slowed, watching, waiting.