Hegira

  And Bar-Woten would never tell, because his stomach heaved at the memory. It was just as well that Barthel had hidden under reed baskets that day in Khem and seen so little.

  An insect crawled up his leg, and he let it climb onto his finger, chancing that it might sting or prick, but it did nothing, and he set it off on the jungle floor.

  He brought out his leather pouch and ate. What was most terrible of all was that he didn't feel nearly as guilty as he should. He took his pain with a sort of zest. He knew he could repeat the past at any time, because though forbidding, it wasn't nearly as frightening as what lay ahead. Establishing familiar territory in the future was necessary, even though the landmarks should be blood and destructions.

  Bar-Woten shook his head slowly, chewing on his piece of fruit. He packed his waste into the leather pouch and put the boat in the river to continue his journey.

  Golumbine offered any number of marvels to the casual eye. There were deep green gorges slashed by long plumes of waterfalls where circular rainbows dazzled. There were multicolored reptile herds, some carnivorous but most not, that stalked through the forest on their hind feet, hunting or browsing on the lower branches and ferns. Butterflies as wide as two hands thumb-to-thumb bobbed in and out of shadow. There were marble quarries and quartz hillsides.

  And there was Mappu itself, where men were in abundance, and neither he nor Barthel found themselves in much demand. He smiled at that, thinking of Kiril's distress.

  He was envious. He'd grown a little bored with the women of the Trident.

  Barthel looked at the maps laid out before him on a forecastle capstan and drew his finger along the Bicht of Weggismarche. There was a small circle that showed the former position of the Obelisk. He used a pencil to sketch in the probable path of the fall.

  Their trade route took them through several broad curves from Golumbine to southern Weggismarche. Depending on what they found after delivering their chief cargo—saffron and several other ton-lots of spice—they'd make a brief journey into the Pale Seas to pick up goods in the port of Dambapur, the farthest northern city of Weggismarche's tiny sister-state, Nin. Then they'd sail with the currents to the southeast and begin another long circle, which, in five or six years, would again end in Weggismarche.

  If there was nothing left of Weggismarche their plans would have to change, of course. At any rate Barthel knew that Bar-Woten, Kiril, and himself would probably leave the ship before then. They might travel along the coast of the Pale Seas, though the map showed little of what lay in those regions beyond a cursory trace of probable coastal zones.

  He was reluctant to leave the Trident. He'd learned a lot on the ship and gained some independence from the Bey by being able to do his own work and think his own thoughts. But his loyalty was still too strong to break. He'd go where the Bey went, and Kiril probably would as well.

  He had seen Kiril with his "wife" the day before at one of Mappu's vegetable markets. Kiril had appeared contented. That puzzled Barthel. Changes in men's moods or mores always puzzled him. The Bey had been the way he was since Barthel had known him, given allowances for times and strenuous circumstances. But Kiril, closer to Barthel's age, seemed much more changeable. Barthel wondered if he himself could show fluctuations as broad. He didn't think so.

  Work on the port hull of the Trident was nearly finished. In a few weeks the ship would be ready to leave, and they'd all have to detach themselves from Golumbine. He was glad he didn't have many detachments to make.

  Captain Prekari made his usual midafternoon inspection of the repairs, carrying rolls of ship's plans in metal tubes, as Bar-Woten came aboard. He went to his cabin and saluted the captain in passing, dropped his goods on the narrow double bunk he shared with Barthel—who took the upper berth—and went aft to shower under freshwater pumps. He didn't trust the baywater yet. No one did. The saltwater pumps were detached for the time they'd spend in the harbor.

  He soaked himself down and used lye soap to scrub off.

  Kiril came aboard two hours later, haggard and irritable. Barthel showed him the map course but didn't ask any questions. The evening meal was quiet. Those who had worked all day on the ship and those who had been ashore all day looked equally fatigued.

  Just after dusk Kiril lay on a lower berth in the cabin he shared with three other men and listened to someone striking up a dance with pipes and tambourine on the quarterdeck. He was too tired to think, though Ual came to mind before he went to sleep. He had been helping two of her half-brothers repair the cracks in the house that day. It had taken a great deal of mortar mixing and masonry, and his hands were raw. He had told her he had to be on board this evening for watch, too weary to face the planned family festivities after the day was done. Still, just before sleep, he missed her warmth and wished he had stayed behind.

  He dreamed about walking with Elena to the temple of Dat in the older section of Mappu. She offered up torn strips of cloth, and the statue bent to accept them with a flaming hand. The statue was not dark-bronze, but mirror-bright silver; and the cloth strips turned to ice and melted away in the flames, hissing. He woke in the morning with a drained feeling and wondered what Elena would have been doing, in any case, on Golumbine.

  The morale of the ship was at a low ebb. They had no idea what had happened in Weggismarche, whether there was any country to return to or not. They feared not.

  Some fights broke out, and the animosities they caused were difficult to settle. The captain avoided direct contact with the crew, which Bar-Woten knew was a standard tactic in times of unresolvable tension. Work on the ship slowed somewhat, and the quality of the work declined.

  More and more of the crew were withdrawn from helping the Golumbines and assigned to repair details on the Trident, allowing shorter shifts. Kiril sweated for a day the possibility he would be withdrawn also, but he remained.

  At midday, his library instruction duties over, he went to Ual's clan home and helped fix the family meal. It was everybody's duty to contribute something to the late afternoon repast. Kiril was no good as a cook, so he helped with the cleaning and basic preparation of the raw food. Ual and one sister did most of the cooking.

  The family was huge by any standard. The relations of the various members to each other were difficult to understand and impossible for Kiril to remember. He stumbled along as best he could and tried to keep his astonishment and indignation in check. Family standards for breeding were much looser than in Mediweva. Dat, he learned from Ual, was the product of her own extratemporal union with the ocean god, Nepheru-Shaka. She was her own mother then, and her own daughter. Nepheru-Shaka was conceived (again out of time) by Dat and the island god, Ashlok—both of whom were female, but Ashlok less definitely so. From this Trinity—with Ashlok as the only unbegotten and unexplained part—came all the other forces, gingerii, minor gods, and the seventy-nine Notions that comprised the loose pantheon of Golumbine. It was a very intellectual religion, quite static. By any definition of culture the Golumbine population should have crumbled into formless bands and gone through the agonies of cultural renaissance long ago. But the culture was stable and showed no signs of decay. Kiril, struggling to ignore the lessons of First-born history as recorded on the Obelisks, speculated the Golumbines were flexible in other ways. Certainly the family group was flexible. They seemed to follow the example of their gods—first cousins were allowed to marry; even, in certain circumstances, brother and sister.

  The generic name of Ual's family was Punapilhi, with the ending "hi" whistled. Within that group name, seldom used, were other names denoting people living together under one roof, people wishing to be named as a subgroup for various reasons, associations of artisans within the family, and other relations that escaped Kiril.

  Ual herself was directly involved with family planning. She was a representative in what the Trident's crew called "the Rebirth Committee." Its main function was to keep Golumbine's diverse family groups together and encourage the production of healthy children.
They had a crude but surprisingly effective method of family counseling on good breeding. To an extent this made them matchmakers.

  Ual's natural father accepted Kiril without comment. Ual had several family fathers—her natural father was not even her favorite. All her fathers—and at one count Kiril found six—had been husbands to her mother, who was a pleasant, plump old woman, no great beauty now, but handsome and jovial. Kiril took a shine to her.

  Ual treated Kiril in public like a favorite brother, and in private little differently, but with extended liberties. His state of husbandship was not stressed, nor formalized by ritual, for he wasn't yet a father. She didn't discourage him from setting up relationships with other females in the family group, but Kiril had no inclination to do so. The whole arrangement was at times a strain on him. After a month of "marriage," he slept aboard the Trident more often. He disliked himself for not fitting in, but he knew the reasons why. His whole being was alien to their way of life.

  It was difficult to face the fact—a very un-Kristian fact—that there were many ways of being happy, prosperous, and pious in human experience. Some of those ways contradicted one another.

  As his disenchantment increased, his love for Ual also increased. Halfhearted, sick with conflict, he struggled with himself. He couldn't let things ride until the Trident offered her own solution. He had to act sooner.

  Ual did not become pregnant in the first month. Her period came, something Kiril knew very little about, and she was sequestered until the menstrual flow had ceased. This had never been the custom in Mediweva, but Kiril accepted it. It gave him time to think clearly.

  When she came out of seclusion, her work with the Rebirth Committee absorbed her for a few more days. They saw very little of each other. Then Kiril managed to pull her away from her omnipresent family, from her position on the Committee, but not from her preoccupation with thoughts of both. At first she only half listened as he tried to explain his difficulties.

  They sat in the empty vegetable market of Mappu in the late afternoon of a religious holiday. A faint breeze scattered bits of dried twigs and leaves across the ground, sounding like the tick of dogs' claws on pavement. He told her he was finding it hard to be happy.

  "You've said nothing before," she told him.

  "I've been trying to explain it to myself. I can't."

  "Because you're going, that's why you're unhappy."

  "That may be. But also because I can't fit into what you do, with your family and all. I'm a wanderer, but I have a lot of solid things in my life that keep me from being like you."

  "Oh," she said. "But you leave soon anyway. Enjoy while you can."

  He shook his head. It was impossible to explain.

  "I would like one thing," Ual said quietly, looking up at him to watch his reaction. "I would like to take advantage of an offer that will be helpful when you leave. A man has offered to be a husband to me, and the alliance of our families would be desirable."

  "After I'm gone you won't have to ask for permission."

  "I would marry him before, but I made a promise to you. You would have to release me from that."

  Kiril stared at her.

  "He will not be a mating husband until after you've gone," she assured him.

  He was scandalized. "I can't allow that," he said, knowing he was being despicable. "That's not right."

  "But we love each other now."

  "You love ME!"

  "Yes."

  "Then why don't you try to stop me from going?"

  "I like you. I won't stop you on your path."

  "But if you loved me you'd try to keep me for as long as you could."

  "I love the pictures in the sky at night when the fire doves draw," she said. "But I can't stop them from changing, and each night they are different."

  "There has to be something, something wrong when two people don't wish to have each other for as long as they can."

  "I do want you."

  "Not forever."

  "I'm not sure of that word. I've studied it. I don't think there is a forever."

  "As long as we live."

  "Ah! But after we die, Dat makes sure we never meet again in other bodies to mate. It is a rule of nature that all things must leave each other. I cannot fight that. You cannot. Nepheru-Shaka will take you away to Weggismarche, and you will have things to do there."

  Kiril had nothing to say. His brain was a knot of thoughts, all of them valid, all ridiculous.

  "And you have told me," Ual continued, "that you have to rescue a person you love very deeply. I cannot stop you from that."

  "Ual, that has nothing to do with—" He stopped himself.

  It did. It had everything to do with what he was doing now. He didn't care about Elena now. He wanted only Ual, and he wanted her away from her family, away from Bar-Woten and Barthel, from the Trident, even from Golumbine, away in some nowhere without conflict. That was the only way he could have her, keep her, the way he wanted her. Kiril knew that was hopelessly immature and destructive. It hurt that he couldn't stop himself from wanting it.

  They would destroy each other even in ideal circumstances. She was like a fish out of water when isolated from her family. Taken away from the journey to find Elena's double, he would be a stripling youth again, without strength or purpose. He would wander from life to life and probably not find happiness even in the best of times with Ual.

  He held his hands out in front of him in a shrug and told her it couldn't go on. "I don't feel right about it," he said. She became exasperated.

  "You don't know what love is!" she said. "You want everything to last forever."

  He nodded.

  "So you would stop us from loving now, from helping to rebuild, because you will leave. I don't understand that."

  There was nothing for him to do but get angry. "You'll have a dozen husbands after me," he said, his voice grinding low in his throat. "Why don't you just forget me, write me off as a bad job?"

  "You are senseless now," she said.

  "No doubt. It hurts me to do this."

  "It hurts me to watch you."

  They sat in the shade of a wide, tall fern in the vegetable market and looked at each other for a few seconds. Kiril felt removed from time. The myriad pressures all added up to one push, which he was following as surely as an arrow flies from its string.

  She stood up and started to walk away.

  "No," Kiril said, reaching out to hold her hand. "I don't want you to go without understanding. I want to help both of us understand. You're the first woman I've ever had. I'm glad for that. You did nothing to hurt me. But after a while I'd be like a rock around your neck. You'd want to take other husbands, and I wouldn't let you. Even anticipating that makes me mad at myself, and with you. Because you can't be what I want you to be."

  "Can anyone?" she asked, a quick coldness in her voice.

  He spoke softly and his words were sure. "Not now. But you especially can't be. I think we have to leave each other. Let's not do it with bitterness."

  "There is no other way," she said. "Otherwise we will not leave for good. A good hunter always makes a clean kill."

  "Neither of us are hunting."

  "You! You are hunting."

  It had to end in anger or it would start up again; it had to be killed. He knew that was what Ual meant. She was turning her disappointment into indignation. Blaming him was the only way.

  His shoulders dropped slightly. "I'm sorry," he said.

  "You are always sorry."

  Then she was gone, and the weight was gone, and something like clarity returned to his thoughts. But his shoulders wouldn't rise again, and he couldn't stand straight.

  He returned to the Trident. The broken mast was being replaced and new rigging was being strung. Darkness came quickly, and candles and torches were lighted on the bund like processions of fire doves.

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  Sixteen

  The Trident steamed out of the harbor with b
right sky and calm water to greet her. Rust stained her hull in long red streaks and some of her sails were patchwork, but her engines were running smoothly and her methane tanks were full. To Bar-Woten she didn't sound the same—her squeaks and groans and snaps came from different areas with different rhythm—but she took the wind well when it came up. She was seaworthy again.

  Golumbine drifted to the south. By evening they couldn't see the island anymore. They were sailing into the dark blue seas that marked the northern waters of the Bicht av Genevar. Away from the warm currents surrounding Golumbine, the air grew chill. High clouds of ice crystals glowed overhead as the last of daylight faded; herringbone, mare's tail, lacework, and fly's wing. To Kiril it seemed sometimes as if cryptic messages were being written in the sky.

  Barthel and Avra and two navigation officers studied the morning glare of the light above the fallen Obelisk, trying to determine how it grew bright and why it faded. Barthel had the uncomfortable feeling it was no natural thing they were watching—not the work of Allah, but something a shade less exalted, though no less impressive.

  Bar-Woten worked for several days finding small leaks in the methane tanks. He worked silently, putting his whole body into it, glad to be traveling again. When his duty was over he went to the prow and stood with one foot resting on the bowsprit clamps, staring north with eye squinted, riddling what lay ahead. Sometimes he shivered and went to his cabin before darkness set in. None of what he saw in the hazy distance pleased him.

  And nothing of what they found in the Bicht was encouraging. Most of the small islands were now barren deserts of sand and mud with patches of salt grass. The larger ones had been ravaged not only by waves and quakes, but by what looked like war. Entire villages had been haphazardly rebuilt, only to be put to the torch. No trade was possible when the only inhabitants were half-dead old women and belly-bloated children. The Trident gave aid where she could, but more often than not she had to leave at full speed with desperate rag-tag ships in pursuit.