“If we don’t leave now, there may be no chance,” said Moor.
“Father, they are coming. If you don’t let me in, there’s no chance for me. I don’t know what will happen. But I will not leave without you.” I was shouting now, and though everyone must have heard us from their hovels no one dared come out. “Mother! Father!” The motorsled headed our way.
“We must leave,” said Moor.
“You must leave. Take the dogs. I’ll meet you at the ship.”
“You have no time.”
“I will stand by my parents.”
“Then you will perish alone. I will not wait for my demise. I am Soom Kali.”
“I cannot leave.” I pounded once more, until it seemed I had cracked the bones in my hands. “I cannot leave, Father, you must help me.”
Now the motorsled had almost reached us. I had come this far only to be arrested. “Father, they’re here. They’ve caught up with me.”
The door swung open and my father looked upon me with no expression. I grabbed my passive father and he ran listlessly beside me. Moor lifted my mother and carried her. She made no struggle.
As someone shouted in Forman behind us, we hurried into the tall fields and cut across to a busy road. It was almost morning, and the road was already thronged with partials going to work. We fell into place and moved at a moderate pace in order not to attract attention from those we passed. The brilliant sun rose on the horizon. But the sun rose on the wrong side of the horizon. It was the light from a fire, coming from the direction of Karrid’s house. What it meant I didn’t know, but I feared for Karrid and his silent green-eyed family. I did not understand the ways of Forma, nor did I entirely comprehend the purpose of authority. I comprehended leaders, those people whose surpassing wisdom and talent so outshone the judgment of others that one had no choice except to defer to them. But of authority I understood nothing.
Right before sunlight there were ships all throughout the sky, shining lights upon the ground.
“Could it be that they’re searching for us?” I said. “A few partials?”
Moor said only, “Hide in the bushes.”
I lay under some bushes with my parents and the dogs. The searchers never ceased all day, but they concentrated their efforts around where the fire had been. Smoke hung above them as if there were no wind at all. Moor, the dogs, and I lay unmoving the whole time, even soiling ourselves to avoid rustling the bushes. My parents didn’t move either, and every time I glanced their way their eyes were open and unfeeling.
At night, with the ships gone, we headed back to the house to see what had become of Karrid. When we arrived we found the burnt bodies: children, and also the body of Karrid, his legs that he had hated so much scorched and blistered under him. He was alive. The scene reminded me of a smaller version of the massacre of my people in the desert. And yet these dead people had lived here. They could not be enemies of the Forman government; they themselves were Forman. I did not see how a Forman, even one who broke the laws, could be considered an enemy of Forma.
“Let us help you,” said Moor. “Who shall we get to help?”
“No, no, I broke the law.”
“But what law have you broken?” I cried.
“I knew you were colluding with your parents to get them to run from their debts. In truth, I felt for you. I also envied you, the way I first saw you walking with such brightness down the road. So I deserve all of this.” He was weeping. “My children, my children.” His children lay burned around him. My parents stood silently by.
“We’ll bring you with us,” I said. “We’re going to our ship. We’ll put you on my dog’s back.”
“I never wanted these legs,” he said softly.
Moor was spreading ointments over Karrid’s legs and then wrapping them in cloth.
“Then it’s settled,” Moor said.
Karrid was shaking his head. “I never should have hired you for so long,” he said tearfully. “In truth I broke a second law. I hired you for more than ten sunrises without asking you for your warrants. That’s why I had to report you.”
“You hired us and yet you reported us as well?”
“My conscience got the best of me. But I didn’t realize it would come to this. They started the fire by accident when they stormed the place. It is only what I deserve. I broke the law!”
“But the law is wrong,” I said. “And those who started the fire are wrong.”
“Nobody has the right to criticize those who uphold the law. Let me die.”
Moor spoke firmly now. “You must show us a way out of here,” he said. “I have just decided. We came back for you and now your obligation is clear. Where I come from honor is not to be trifled with.”
“Honor is following the law, young man. You have no honor.”
“We must let him die if he wishes,” I said. “Where I come from it is not honorable to force one to act against his will.”
“We are not in Bakshami,” Moor said sharply. Moor was by far the strongest of all of us, stronger most probably even than Artie. He stood up to his full height and his arms seemed to lie ready for anything at his side. “I insist,” he said.
In this way we gained yet another companion.
4
That night our reluctant guide rode on Moor’s back and mumbled directions. My parents plodded along in a daze. If it were not for the fact that they looked like my parents I would not have recognized them. The air was as still and untroubled as the towns through which we passed. Again I thought how it seemed impossible this could be the land of my enemies.
Aiding us tortured Karrid, that was plain. He wanted to turn us in, the way all his instincts implored him to do; yet some higher instinct told him that life was more valuable even than the law he adored. He suspected, and we knew, that if he turned us in we might be killed accidentally, the way partials sometimes were. So his instincts battled each other and his legs ached and oozed as he led us through this peaceful world that waged war. Several times people passed, and we nodded solemnly as they gazed at us suspiciously.
The stillness and the delightful air held no influence over the dogs. They seemed to feel tension everywhere and fought with each other so harshly that Karrid feared one would get hurt. Artie was much bigger, but Shami’s fierceness possessed a demonlike quality. She darted in and out among us like some legendary beast. The dogs drew blood from each other. I was neither surprised nor greatly disturbed by this behavior. I’d often seen dogs act this way, sometimes in response to tension, sometimes for their own amusement. Artie and Shami continued to brutalize each other. I admired their agility and ferociousness and knew both of these qualities were at my disposal and would never be turned against me. But they were making too much noise.
“Quiet,” I hissed, and they immediately ceased and became the sweet dogs I knew.
“How is your back, Moor?” I said.
“It will hold up because it must.”
Someone passed a few measures away and paused to stare at us with alert distrust.
“Why is everyone here so suspicious?” I said when the stranger had passed.
“Who can say with certainty who is breaking the law and who not?” Karrid said. “Look at me, law-abiding all my life, and now I aid the likes of you. We must constantly be on the lookout for lawbreakers.”
“And what if you find them?”
“We must contact the authorities. Perhaps someone has already contacted them regarding us.”
“We are breaking no law,” I said. “Walking cannot be against the law.”
“It depends where you walk.”
“We walk through a town.”
“It depends on the circumstances.”
“The circumstances are we would like to save our lives. A world that has a law against saving one’s own life is an irrational world indeed.”
“It depends who you are. The law is not here to protect you. You are only partials.”
“I would spit on that law if I co
uld see it,” I said angrily. I regretted my disrespect but not my anger.
“Fortunate for you then that you can’t see it.”
“And if I could and I did spit on it?”
He didn’t answer, but Moor spoke for him. “The law here breathes with life just as a thunderstorm breathes with life. But unlike a thunderstorm a law possesses intelligence and intention. Don’t spit on that which exceeds your power.”
A new stranger passed, and I felt a vague fear growing in me. I began to wonder why these strangers happened to be passing on the same obscure road on which we walked. I couldn’t tell whether my fear was groundless or justified. My stomach said it was justified. I would look into each suspicious face that passed, and even if we had not seen anyone for a long time I would wonder why so many people passed on this road. Why should anyone at all besides us travel on this road at this hour? Surely these people had homes. If they weren’t passing just to stare with suspicion at us, then where were they going? It got so that I could scarcely contain my fear. Once I saw a hulking form far away and feared for our lives. But when the form grew closer it turned out to be a woman carrying a child in her arms and a pile of cloth on her head. And then I thought, If not to spy on us, why is this woman walking down this road with a child and a pile of cloth? The peaceful air held a virus of fear, and I had caught it.
Karrid was leading us to some underground tunnels that he’d discovered as a child. He said we might regroup there, hiding until the authorities moved on to fresh game. Then we might continue to Zem’s ship. Karrid never told his law-abiding parents about the tunnels because they would have been obligated to tell the authorities, and he wanted the tunnels to remain a secret. As he spoke about the tunnels he seemed almost to forget his torment.
“I used to go down there first by myself, and then with my brothers and sisters. The tunnels stretched on forever. You could live there if you wanted! You could hide there! Across the sector there are other tunnels where certain mathematical cults live and speak in mathematical languages that only they understand. I’ve heard they spend all day discussing whether the number two is the number one split in half or two separate number ones. That the government tolerates them is proof that we’re a free world. But the tunnels I’m taking you to are unknown. My brothers and I planted trees in front to hide them when we moved from there.”
He fell asleep then, and Moor wondered aloud whether Karrid could be hallucinating, remembering a childhood that had never existed. So then I had a new fear to add to all the other fears overwhelming me. But on the outside I managed to appear calm. This thought gave me still another fear, that perhaps underneath his outer calm Moor was as scared as I was. I didn’t like to think of Moor scared.
“Are you—” I started.
“No,” he interrupted sharply.
“I was going to ask whether you’re scared,” I said.
“I know. I’m not.”
“Not even somewhat?”
“I am always scared since I met you.”
We came to a fork and tried to rouse Karrid, but he merely groaned. The tunnels were in the opposite direction from Zem’s ship. We needed to decide whether to try to reach Zem’s ship or to find the tunnels. Moor wanted to find the tunnels. He thought that we would not be able to make it to the ship in time. My parents did not voice an opinion. I searched the predictions and traditions for an answer, but none came. Therefore I voted with my logic, and with Moor.
Once, we saw a group of boisterous people walking toward us, and we immediately hid in some bushes. They stopped in the distance and huddled around something. Half the night seemed to pass before the group reached us and walked on. They moved in silence now, men and women but no children, and I could tell nothing from their expressions.
We continued after they’d left our sight. When we got to where they’d huddled, Moor pointed out something: a body sitting upright by the side of the road. It was a Bakshami—a partial—who looked eerily like my brother Maruk and whose bloodied face held insolence even in death. The body was still warm.
My mother fell to her knees before the Bakshami man and cried out, “Maruk! My son.”
My father took her by the shoulders and said simply, “No.”
“We must continue,” said Moor urgently.
I formed a circle of leaves and rocks around the dead man, and we continued. “That will help to send him back to the hotlands, to become a part of the sand that bore him.”
“We need to hurry,” Moor said.
I stared at the dead Bakshami, whose life no doubt had been ruled by prediction as mine had been. Before the war few Bakshami who survived childhood died before their time. Seeing that dead man—whose life had been ruled by the same forces as mine and who so strongly resembled my brother—made me fear that all was chance now, for if he could die so might I. I could not know whether stopping would aid or hinder us, or whether hurrying would destroy us or save us. I saw this man watching the beautiful, peaceful road where flowers bloomed under the stars and promised all things to all passers. I remembered how many compulsive people stayed in the hotlands forever asking the elders questions about the future. They reasoned that each day circumstances changed; thus did their futures change in minute ways. What an elder might predict for me this day I had no idea. All was random now.
And in any case I was no longer in Bakshami. I was a partial now, in Forma, and I must act accordingly or else end up by the side of the road staring insolently at the flowers in the fields.
“He’s dead,” said Moor.
“I know,” I said. “I was thinking he looked like my oldest brother.”
“I mean Karrid.”
He set down Karrid by the road as well, just a measure away from the Bakshami. I smelled an odor that was a mixture of Karrid’s festering legs and the death of two friends.
“His legs won’t bother him now,” said Moor. Moor folded his legs so that you couldn’t tell one was longer than the other. He hesitated. “Do you need to form a circle around him?”
“Perhaps I will.” So again I placed rocks and leaves around a dead man. Only then did we move on.
What we were looking for now was trees that looked as if they might be hiding an entrance to some tunnels. But I had no idea how a tree hiding an entrance might look different from any other tree. Karrid had told us which town he’d lived in as a child, and told us also what kind of trees he and his brothers had planted. In other words, he’d told very little of use to us. That night was the twenty-second from the time we’d arrived in Forma.
We slept all day and walked at night, and when we reached Karrid’s old town we were aghast to see a huge sign in fifty different languages, apparently saying fifty times: “Visit the Legendary Tunnel—Purchase Passes Here.” There was a map showing the location of the tunnel, and a pamphlet in Forman, Artroran, and a language I didn’t recognize about how the tunnels attracted people from all over the planet and how this town had flourished after the tunnels were discovered a few years earlier by an amorous couple. Moor read to me from the Artroran.
Several branches of the tunnels were off limits, including one branch where, legend said, there existed a crevice where gravity was warped and people fell so slowly to their deaths that they would, according to the top scientists, probably starve before they burned to death at the center of the planet. Down another branch lived people who could see in the dark and hated all but themselves. One off-limit branch remained unexplored simply because for some reason people grew so frightened when they neared the branch that none dared venture forth. And so on, for eleven off-limit branches. If you even leaned over the crevice you would be caught in its pull and fall to your death, and if you even neared those who saw in the dark they would try to destroy you. A few people had accidentally learned these things, but whatever else was known about these branches had been learned through experiments with dogs. So said the signs and pamphlets Moor read to me.
“What kind of insane people would throw dogs down
a crevice?” I asked.
When we went to the caves we found wooden booths apparently open during the day and selling all manner of tunnel paraphernalia.
“We should go in,” Moor said.
My father spoke up for the first time since we’d left the farm. “But the sign says it’s open only during the day.”
Moor politely did not reply, but I replied for him. “Shall we let a sign stop us when we’ve come so far?”
“To what purpose do we enter against the law?”
“We will go in,” I said firmly.
“Karrid insisted the tunnels were elaborate,” said Moor. “He seemed to believe we could hide out in them.”
“Again I ask, to what purpose?”
“We can hide in there, I tell you,” I said. “Fate has brought us here for a reason.” Or, for no reason, I thought. And even though I’d sworn not to abide by the predictions, I added, “It’s dark in tunnels, the opposite of our world full of blinding sunlight. Maybe that’s what my grandfather meant when he said I would find a guide somewhere the opposite of Bakshami. And Karrid says the tunnels are a way of getting to Hathatu-me. No one will pay attention to us there.”
Father did not answer, so we entered the tunnels, which were artificially lit for as far as we could see. We walked until the dogs grew restive, and still we could not see the end of the light in the main tunnel in which we walked. We began randomly to take offshoots, all of them marked with signs and lit by lights that emphasized their jagged shapes.
Apparently the Formans drove through here with vehicles during tours. We knew that, outside the tunnels, daylight might come at any moment, and a vehicle might then travel through these caves. So we didn’t stop. I grew as exhausted as I ever had during all my walking. At least during the trek to the hotlands, I could sleep each night. Here there was no night or day. My legs felt stiff and arthritic, and the artificial lights made my head throb. Beyond the point when I first felt I could go no further, we were relieved and overjoyed to see that an offshoot of the tunnel through which we walked was not lit at the end. Moor’s superior eyes spotted this sheltering darkness. As we hurried toward it we could hear noises far away, and as the noises neared we heard laughing. We hid in a lighted offshoot. A motorsled whizzed by full of people laughing. After that scare we rushed into the darkness, running desperately so that we could be engulfed by the safety of darkness. Unlike those who fear first what they don’t know and then what they do, we feared only what we knew, which was the sounds of laughter behind us. When we reached the darkness we collapsed briefly, and then rose and kept going until we collapsed again. This time I fell asleep.