“You act like all the other immigrants to Artroro,” I said. “It’s hard to know when you tell the truth.”
He laughed. “What? You mean you don’t assume I’m always lying? How flattering.”
“As a Soom Kali I would hope we could depend on you,” said Moor.
“Unfortunately, you probably can. If I could just be more unreliable to people who can’t help me, maybe I would get further ahead.” He smiled warmly at Moor. “There are so few of our people here it’s difficult for me. I feel lonely sometimes. Perhaps we can compete later, throw some knives.” He turned to me. “No one can throw a knife like Moor.”
“I’ve seen that.”
We followed Zem into the kitchen. He walked slightly bow-legged, and his feet fell heavily with each step. Moor in contrast moved sleekly, the way Shami did. Zem tripped over some packages in the hallway, and his feet pounded to the floor. Moor and I smiled at each other. “You’d be surprised how graceful he is in an emergency,” Moor said.
In the kitchen we ate a wonderful meal—since I’d left my village my meals often alternated between the minimum needed to keep myself from hunger and the maximum I could eat without feeling ill effects. Sometimes I went beyond those two extremes into feeling starved by the emptiness of my stomach and feeling stupefied by the fullness. Tonight I felt the latter, eating five different types of bread, a type of meat I’d never tasted that Zem said came from the sea, and all the fruit I wanted. I ate more than I’d ever eaten at once in my life, but Moor ate twice as much as I, and Zem three times.
During dinner, Zem told us he wanted us up early the next day to help him clean his ship. He also told us at dinner that the artifacts in his house came from many lands and that he sold them to customers or obtained them on commission. Evidently some wealthy Artroran customers had decided that the decoration of their homes would be enhanced if they obtained artifacts from Forma. The work was secretive. Obtaining these artifacts was not exactly illegal, however, in that the Forman government itself often sold them against its own laws.
“I’m happy to fill up my years with adventure,” said Moor.
“I don’t mind an occasional minor adventure,” said Zem.
“Even that is not the Bakshami way,” I said. “For instance, my grandfather filled up his years with wisdom. By accompanying you, I may be giving up my way for a life of escapade.”
“You have already given up your way,” Moor pointed out.
“I once gave up my way of life,” said Zem. “But I didn’t give it up voluntarily. It was forced upon me.” He looked at Moor. “Do you have secrets from her?”
“I haven’t thought about it, as I have few secrets. I’ve told her about your father.”
He nodded. “I’ve never felt sadness, regret, or shame over my father. All my life, I did as he asked. The last thing he told me was how much he loved me, and then I killed him.” This time Zem spoke forthrightly, without guile. Even when he used guile, he used it like an amateur. I already felt affection for his clumsiness and transparent lies. “I considered going to see your elders myself once, to ask questions about my father before I, that is, before he passed away.”
The dogs ran playfully through the kitchen, Artie with a precious-looking box in his mouth. Zem smiled at them, uncaring about whatever it was Artie held. As always when the dogs played, Artie behaved straightforwardly, simply taking an item in his mouth and trying to hold on to it as Shami chased him and attempted to get the item. And when she took an item in her mouth, he simply tried to pull it away from her. But as the smaller one she played more deviously, biting his legs and ears to make him drop whatever he held in his mouth and then grabbing her prize. Artie, twice her size, happily played with her while she bit him until he squealed. Only rarely did he attack her so hard in retaliation that she rolled on her back in surrender. Often he was the one to surrender.
“In general he treats her with the tolerance of a man in love,” said Zem. “I’ve yet to treat a woman that way.”
“So has Moor,” I said.
“You underestimate my tolerance of you,” he said.
“And you overestimate my bad qualities.”
“Ha!” said Zem. “Overestimate, underestimate. It’s all estimation, that’s the important thing. Tell me both sides of your story, and I’ll tell you exactly what I think. Forget all this estimation, it’ll get you nowhere.”
“She trusts everyone,” said Moor. “Her trust will destroy me, and you, too, if you don’t watch out.”
“It isn’t my fault. It’s the fault of all the scoundrels you involve us with. Where do you find these thieves?”
“Score one merit for Moor,” said Zem. “It’s folly to trust thieves. They’re only doing what they must.”
“As I am,” I said. “I come from a sector where one trusts neighbor and stranger alike.”
“One merit for the strong-legged woman! She must trust whom she trusts.”
“She cares more for her dogs than she does for me,” said Moor.
“Merit! Merit!” shouted Zem in his high voice.
“That might change if you cared as much for me as my dogs did,” I said.
“She matches you every time,” said Zem. “I suggest you both have equal merit. Therefore you needn’t estimate anymore but consider yourselves equal in both folly and wisdom.” He yawned extravagantly. “It’s time for me to go to bed. You two should get to sleep.”
“Will there be only the three of us on your ship?” I said. “And can the dogs come?”
Zem laughed and looked at Moor. “You’re right. Those dogs again! Yes, they can come. But are you sure your dogs can stand the rigors of flying?”
“They flew in a plane in Mallarr without reaction. I, on the other hand, got sick.”
“A plane is different.”
“My dogs can do anything yours can,” I said.
He looked angry for the first time since I’d seen him, but it was a child’s anger, the type that’s quick to appear and quick to dissolve. “I take great pride in my dogs,” he said. “But they don’t like to travel.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I only meant that I, too, take pride in my dogs. Since you feel the same way about yours we understand each other.”
That appeased him. “My unspeaking friend will watch my house and belongings while I’m gone. I might tell you that you may trust him for anything.”
“But you said you told him to feed us, and he didn’t.”
“Oh, did I say that?” said Zem, his voice rising into a squeak. Then his voice lowered as he continued. “All right then, I advised him not to feed you. After all, I can’t afford to feed every beggar who comes along. I owe Moor my life, but now he is two, with two dogs.”
“He’s generous in all matters but those involving food,” Moor said.
“We’re hardly beggars,” I said.
“But you do beg,” said Zem.
“Merit!” I said, and we all laughed.
Moor and I slept in a tiny room almost filled by the bed. In bed he told me that while Zem had changed since the last time he saw him, Zem still followed his feelings as he always had. The bed, like our meal earlier, was very fine indeed, and on this fine bed Moor and I once more practiced breeding in anticipation of the twenty days in a row when I came into season each year. Later when we slept, I dreamed again of riding on the fog. The next morning Moor told me he’d had the same dream, and in this way I knew our spirits had joined.
Part Six
1
I couldn’t eat much breakfast the next day because my stomach was still adjusting to my big dinner. Moor didn’t eat much either, but Zem ate almost as much as he had the previous night. He seemed hurt by our refusal to eat a lot, but his natural good spirits returned in a moment.
The ship we would take to Forma sat inside an immense warehouse in back. The round ship was twice the size of Zem’s house, and clunky, not as sleek as the Forman and Soom Kali ships I’d seen. There was a hard quality to the me
tal, as if nothing could break this ship. But I knew this wasn’t true; I saw dents and nicks in the surface. Zem said it had taken him a lot of mistakes to learn how to maneuver his ship. He’d unexpectedly won the ship gambling and had taken only a few lessons on working it.
We loaded up packages of herbs, oils, and ointments—considered planetwide to be staples of good health. The aromas excited me. They were like the aromas of life itself to an Artekkan. The thought surprised me because before my travels I’d never regarded myself as an Artekkan, only as a Bakshami.
Like Moor, Zem owned a variety of knives, and he decided to bring several so that he and Moor could compete.
“The only time you should stop competing is when you’ve lost your self-respect and your good health,” Zem said. “Then, you know you’re defeated.”
“Have you ever reached that point?”
“I’ve lost my self-respect, and almost lost my good health. But then I regained everything,” he said casually. He looked expectantly at me.
“And then what?”
“That’s when I won this ship.”
“Why do you continue to compete? Perhaps you could lose your ship just as the previous owner did.”
He looked pained when I said that, but it was a pain he enjoyed feeling—the idea of losing his ship thrilled as well as pained him.
All day we loaded and arranged. Later Zem tinkered with the ship as Moor and I watched and learned. We would take the ship briefly into space where the Formans were less likely to notice us, and then descend to Forma.
When darkness fell Moor and I spent a short time exploring the sights of Clasmata. Everywhere, I saw people engaged in acts of enormous strength, lifting motorsleds that had broken down, pulling diseased trees out of the ground, hauling great blocks of stone. Even Moor, hailing as he did from a culture where people revered strength, grudgingly admired the Artrorans.
The color of sand dominated Bakshami, and the colors of dirt, stone, and metal overwhelmed a visitor to Soom Kali. But here in Artroro the buildings, trees, and flowers all burst forth with an array of colors that gave me a jolt of excitement every time I walked out into the city.
The city was much safer than the countryside and villages, and apparently the Artrorans believed this was because the immigrants were naturally more violent. The lights on the paths didn’t give off the eerie luster of the night lamps in the outskirts. These lights glowed with a quality that was both opaque and vibrant, not like the moon or metal but like someone’s eyes, perhaps. I didn’t feel I could see through the lights, but at the same time their vibrancy gave them a somewhat transparent effect.
We saw groups of people laughing as they leisurely walked the paths. The lights enveloped them in a milky luminescence that made them fantastic and beautiful, and I imagined Moor and me enveloped in the same fantastic light. Late at night Moor and I ate by a lake in one of the vast parks. One or two people wandered, but no one paid us any mind. Food stands floated on the lake for any boaters who might want a snack. Opaque, vibrant lights in the shapes and colors of fruits decorated the stands.
“Someday we’ll return under different circumstances,” Moor promised me. The wind refreshed us with its coolness in the warm night. A man sat on the grass nearby, staring wistfully out at the lake. An aura of great fatigue surrounded him that even the night’s peacefulness couldn’t penetrate. Seeing him made me realize that such an aura was beginning to surround Moor and me.
“And when we return we’ll stop at one of the fruit stands on the lake?” I said.
“I promise,” Moor said, in one of his responsive moods. It was an idle promise, but I felt as full of bliss at that moment as I ever had.
As they often did, the dogs nuzzled noses as if kissing, and then they wrestled briefly before tearing into the darkness of some trees and back into the light of a lamp.
But we needed to move forward.
Back at Zem’s, he was ready to leave. While he explained to his unspeaking friend what needed doing in our absence, Moor and I sat in the console room of the ship. He explained to me that there was some sort of magnet in the center of the ship. The Soom Kali found fuel-based ships more reliable, but the Soom Kali ships did not go into space, even for a short time. Like Bakshami’s, their culture faced inward. Most of Artekka faced inward. Restophlin was the only planet of the Thirteen Sisters that could be said to possess advanced technology. In fact, when told what Restophlin had achieved, most Artekkans would say the achievements were impossible and broke the known laws of science. These laws had been proved, said the engineers of Artekka.
Out a porthole I could see the warehouse, gray stone walls, piles of boxes, and occasional vermin scampering among the boxes and against the walls. My grandfather used to tell me that a scientific law was like a box inside another box, inside another, and so on endlessly. Every piece of scientific knowledge a person possessed lay inside another, more important piece of knowledge. He said the laws of mystery were just as powerful as those of science, but that other cultures had lost their respect for mystery.
I’d said I didn’t see why I couldn’t do both, and he’d replied that very few have time.
Outside, Zem’s friend had attached a tow line to the ship and had started to drag us out of the warehouse just as Zem entered the room where Moor and I sat. “Why is he doing that?” I said. “I thought this thing could fly.”
“Of course it can fly. But it can’t drive.”
When we got outside, the warehouse behind us seemed suddenly inviting and predictable. Zem tethered all the dogs in special cages, and then tethered Moor and me. The vehicle that had dragged us outside drove back into the warehouse, and Zem’s friend closed the immense warehouse doors. Next came an acceleration that made my whole body tingle unpleasantly, the way my legs did when they lost circulation. When that stopped I saw Artroro through the clouds. In the city the lights of different colors bloomed like flowers all around, while far away I could see the eerie luster of the apparently cheaper lights used in immigrant areas. Another ship descended in the distance, and as we climbed higher I could see the whole blue sphere of Artekka. Looking down, it was as if I were slowly adjusting a viewer so that everything below grew smaller and smaller.
Moor had grown excited and was struggling to untether himself. When he finished he hurried to the window and stared down below. I freed myself as well and joined him. A part of me felt exhilarated at the impossibility of the distances involved. That I could be so far above the ground I’d walked on not long ago! My adventures were like those boxes of which Grandfather had spoken, each adventure a small box within a larger.
Moor stood at the controls helping Zem. “This one?” he was saying, and Zem nodded. I set free my dogs. We’d tethered them in padded cages. Shami lay inside hers sideways with drool falling out of her mouth.
“Shami’s sick,” I said.
“It’s temporary,” Zem called out. “It happens to a lot of dogs. People, too.”
And as if on cue, I gagged and needed to sit down. I leaned against Shami’s cage while her eyes rolled up to meet mine.
“Don’t worry, beautiful dog, I feel the same way. It’s temporary.”
Artie came over and nudged me and then Shami. I hoped Zem was right. I couldn’t imagine enduring this for long.
Moor knelt beside me. “Zem says that as soon as he’s done he’ll give you medication.” He brushed the hair from my face. “You’re sweating.”
“It’s hot in here.”
“It’s cool.”
“There you go again, tormenting me,” I said.
“I don’t torment you, only tell you the truth.”
“That’s what I mean. If the truth is not sometimes a torment, what is?”
Zem giggled at us from the console. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk.”
“Why? It’s not my words that make me gag but this ship.”
Zem came up and pressed something sticky on my arm. In a second I started to feel better. My head still swam,
but more mildly. Zem had brought an array of medicines that represented a hundred different colors, tastes, textures, and properties. After a while I couldn’t tell whether Shami was sick because of the ship or because she’d taken too much medicine. She licked Zem’s hand as if to tell him she appreciated all the medicines he’d brought for her. She was truly a sweet child.
“Better?” said Zem.
“Yes, but I still have to concentrate to keep from succumbing to the sickness.”
“Good, concentration on a worthy cause is an excellent way to pass your time.”
I spoke quietly to Moor. “What was Zem like when you knew him before?”
“He was the most decent person I ever met.”
“For me, that would be my father and mother.”
Moor administered still more medicine to Shami. Like me, she made a partial recovery. She sat up, her tongue hanging out and her eyes appearing a bit loose in their sockets.
“Will she and I be able to withstand this?”
“You have no choice. Choices are not always a part of battle.”
“I don’t believe in battles then. In Bakshami it is said that there are no choices unless there are many.”
“You are not in Bakshami.”
I felt suddenly sorry for myself. “Ohhh, Ohhh,” I said. “You torment me again. My head hurts.” As soon as I’d spoken I felt sorry, for I saw how worried my words made Moor. “I’ll be fine. If I could only lie down.”
“I’ll show you where to lie momentarily,” called out Zem. He howled joyously, as Cray the storyteller did sometimes, and as Bakshami people did occasionally while playing the rhythms. “I love flying. But Moor, I need your help.”
My head had started to clear, and I got up again to sit at the window-like screen before us. Moor helped his friend. The sphere of Artekka glowed like an Artroran street light. Though the planet looked much smaller now, the distance had the effect of making the ship rather than the planet seem small. I couldn’t tell where my homeland lay, if it was even within my sight now. Yet I could still imagine the planet full of people, and I pictured my brother Maruk and his wife in Soom Kali and my young brother and sister in the hotlands. And, even knowing one may have died, I pictured both of my parents. I also saw my grandfather’s remains turning to sand and blowing toward the hotlands, where in a million years they might be incorporated into the Glass Mountains. And I saw the past thousands of years of peace in Bakshami, and the way the sands changed as the clouds over Artekka changed. My people had lived their lives with serenity and grace despite the hardships. The dust used to blow through the air and fall down my robe and into my shoes, and stick to my scalp. And every year great waves of sand migrated over the ground and engulfed the past which was just like the future.