Pallahaxi

by Michael Coney

  “So where did the people go?”

  If Stance was annoyed at the interruptions he didn’t show it. His voice had dropped and he leaned forward, legs astride, feet firmly planted on the bench, calves bulging before my eyes, willing his audience into gullibility. And he was good. There was no doubt about it; he was good. I could read trust in the faces all around — except, of course, those of Lonessa, Wand, Cuff and Charm. They knew Stance better.

  “They didn’t go anywhere,” he said. “They stayed right here, and they prayed. Day and night they prayed, and the Great Lox listened. They prayed as we must pray.”

  A lone skeptic called, “Pray for forty years?” It was Silly May, standing near the end of the bench. She met my eyes and began to sidle toward us.

  Stance smiled as though humoring a child. “Forty years? Of course not. Forty years is what the humans say, and what do they know about it? They stayed here for a handful of generations and then they left. Forty years? No, this is the usual freeze, perhaps longer than most, but its duration is entirely in the hands of the Great Lox, not some human soothsayer. The Great Lox will listen to our plea, and come the spring the flowers will bloom, and we’ll walk out of here into a world as it always has been.”

  “He’s winning them over,” muttered Wand. “Clever freezer.”

  “Do it, Hardy,” whispered Mister McNeil.

  So it all depended on me, did it? I looked up at my uncle’s sturdy figure, foreshortened by the angle, all powerful legs and tense buttocks; and I knew that whatever I said, nobody would listen. Stance was mesmerizing them and any opposition would merely lower my own standing, which was already low enough… .

  It was Silly May who had the inspiration. Silly May, unhampered by memory, whose thinking never followed the well-trodden paths. While I was desperately juggling words in my mind, she cut to the core of the problem of humbling Stance.

  She took hold of the bench on which he stood, and began to shake it vigorously.

  “Let us pray!” Stance was shouting at the time. Then he began to lose his balance. And posture was very important to Stance’s credibility. Staggering, he glanced over his shoulder angrily.

  The genius behind Silly May’s action became clear to the rest of us. Mister McNeil and Charm grabbed the bench and added their efforts to hers. I was only mildly surprised to see Lonessa and Cuff do the same. And I was shaking with the best of them. Only Wand remained motionless, bewildered and affronted by our actions.

  The spell was broken and isolated laughter came from the audience. So far as most of them could see, Stance was performing a curious dance.

  “Up you go, Hardy,” said Mister McNeil, and lifted me bodily to the bench, which became suddenly steady as the shakers desisted. The only things shaking now were my knees, as Stance turned a murderous glance on me and the audience buzzed with interest.

  I said loudly, “We’re wasting time. Our people died here before, just as we’ll die if we stay.”

  “Oh?” Stance regarded me with exaggerated interest. “And where do you suggest we go, young Hardy?”

  “To the lorin caves.”

  “To the lorin caves. The lorin caves, you say. Yes, I think we know your love of lorin. And what will we do there, Hardy?”

  “The lorin have a milk that sends you to sleep.”

  “Of course they do, of course they do. Now just step down and let me talk to the people, there’s a good lad.”

  “The lorin are our only chance!” I shouted desperately.

  “I think not. I know you’ve always been obsessed by them — didn’t you once tell us we’re the same species as those furry little fellows? But we’ll stay here in Pallahaxi, Hardy. The holy fount. A fitting place to await the rebirth of the sun god Phu, don’t you think?” And he stepped close, put a friendly arm around my shoulders and suddenly and shockingly whispered in my ear, “Get down right now, you little freezer, of I’ll have one of my men put his spear through you!”

  I looked into his smiling face and drew a perverse strength from his words. Obviously my presence alarmed him. I said loudly, “So we were wrong about the reason our ancestors burned their books. We thought it was because Phu gave them the gift of memory. But that wasn’t the reason, was it, Stance?”

  “What?” He hadn’t really thought about this yet.

  “The people down below burned the books to keep warm. And when the books were all gone, they froze to death.”

  “But we’re not down below, are we, Hardy?”

  “There are plenty of ashes on this level too.”

  “And that proves my point. The people up here prayed, received the gift of memory, burned the books and lived. The people below were godless and they died.”

  This was my chance, or so I thought. The truth was, I probably never had a chance. “So where did the people on this level go when they’d burned the books?

  “Out into a warm world, of course.”

  My mouth was dry. “Did you actually stardream this?”

  “I certainly did.”

  “Well so did I, and that’s not the way it happened at all.”

  The audience howled; that’s the only way I can describe it. It was an animal sound, overwhelming, hostile, directed at me. I’d overstepped the bounds of decency by a long, long way.

  “Are you challenging my memory?” roared Stance.

  “Yes! I’m saying you’ve invented the whole freezing thing. You built up all this religious nonsense because you’ve got no real memories to tell you the truth. You’ve no idea what happened even one generation ago. You’re risking the lives of all these people for the sake of hanging onto your power. You’re not fit to be a chief. You’re disabled and you’ve been disabled from birth — I’ve stardreamed your coming-of-age! You’ve concealed it all these years, and you’ve killed those who—”

  But the noise from the audience drowned out anything more I could say. Hands grabbed for me. I saw Spring in the crowd, and made out her words, “He’s right! Listen to him!” but I was reading her lips, and nobody heard her. Then Stance raised a hand and they fell silent, damn them, loxlike in their obedience. He smiled at me pityingly.

  I tried again, before he could speak. “Truth is the enemy of religion, don’t you see? If we can’t remember it, it didn’t happen. Trust your memories!”

  “So you stardreamed that far back, did you?” Stance asked. “Well, well. And if our family tradition is to be believed, you and I are the only people here who can do that. Just you and I, Hardy. And you’d like to be chief, wouldn’t you? Just like your father would have liked to be chief.”

  “There’s someone else who can remember the Great Freeze, Stance.”

  “Oh, there is?” His eyebrows lifted in mock astonishment, but there was a touch of alarm in his eyes.

  Charm climbed onto the bench. “Me.”

  The audience was becoming noisy again.

  “Let’s see, aren’t you Hardy’s trollop? The flounder who lives with a grubber?”

  “I’ve heard enough of this!” Now Lonessa mounted the bench. We were getting perilously crowded up there, but the sight of the Noss womanchief quietened people down.

  Stance eyed her uncertainly. “I realize Charm’s your daughter, of course, but—”

  “I’m not here to argue about memories, Stance. That’s all beside the point.”

  “And your point is… ?”

  “That you murdered your brother, Stance, and I can prove it!

  When Mister McNeil used to tell me exciting stories about space travel, he would often use the expression ‘the blood drained from his face.’ Well, stilks have many similarities to humans for very good reasons, and as I watched Stance I actually saw the blood leaving his face, presumably to help his brain to race. Until, pallid as one of those disgusting buzzflies from the floor below, he croaked, “Nonsense!”

  “Cuff!” snapped Lonessa.

  The Noss manchief threw a sack made of stitched
skins to the already overloaded bench and climbed up after it. The sack was distorted by something long and slender inside. Cuff let it lie and faced the audience, which had gone very quiet.

  “Yam Bruno was a popular man,” he began. “We admired him in Noss, and we found him easy to negotiate with… except… .” He bit his lip. He was obviously remembering dear old Dad throwing him against the wall. Now, he was deciding, was not the time to reopen old wounds. If Stance was to be the villain, then Dad had to be the good guy. As indeed he was. “It was a blow to both villages when he was killed.

  “What made it worse, was that he was killed at Noss. He was found floating with a stab wound in his back by his son Hardy, who… .” Again he hesitated, glancing at me. Another old grievance had surfaced. He was remembering I’d accused him of murder, but he’d matured a lot since ascending to chiefship. He swallowed the memory and continued. “It was early in the grume. Nobody knew who had done this thing.

  “We know how it was done, though. Yam Stance, his brother, came up behind him while he was standing at the edge of Noss estuary and stabbed him in the back with his hunting spear. Bruno toppled and fell into deep water, nearly taking Stance with him.”

  “Supposition!” shouted Stance. “Lies! Were you there yourself, to see this vision?”

  Cuff ignored him. “Stance jerked at the spear and it came away from the body, but the barbs had caught inside Bruno’s cloak. The cloak was pulled from Bruno’s back and Stance, overbalancing, had to let go of his spear. The spearhead was iron. And Stance is a grubber. He can’t swim. He was forced to watch the spear sink out of sight, taking the cloak with it. But he thought he was safe; the evidence had gone to the bottom of the sea and that was the end of it.”

  Now he turned and regarded Stance. The boy-man of my acquaintance had disappeared. He was an adult facing an adult. And Stance’s eyes dropped. “But you’re an inlander, Stance and you’d forgotten the grume.”

  Stance repeated woodenly, “The grume? The grume?”

  “The grume was not at its height yet. Days passed and the water became more dense. Do you see what that means? Things float to the top when they water gets denser, don’t they?” He picked up his bag. “Things like deep-sea fish, and sunken boats, and… .”

  He pulled his exhibits from the bag and held them high. “And cloaks with spears through them. Recognizable cloaks, recognizable spears. Bruno’s negotiating cloak, your ceremonial spear, Stance!”

  It was the finish of my uncle. He stared at the exhibits uncomprehendingly, no doubt wondering where his prayers had gone wrong and why the Great Lox had deserted him. I see now that he had no moral sense; this is instilled in us by generations of memories. Or in the case of a child with a defective memory lobe like Silly May, by careful teaching. Stance had had no such teaching, because Granddad had never admitted he was lacking.

  Was Granddad the chief culprit in all this? Maybe. But he was found dead soon after Stance’s coming-of-age; stabbed in the back. It makes you think, doesn’t it? Perhaps he’d told Stance that he couldn’t succeed him as chief unless he started remembering, pretty quick. And the young Stance, defective in memory but eager for power, killed him. Who knows?

  Trigger knows, because he must have inherited the memory of the killing. Stance would have put it under geas, naturally. But it’s there in Trigger’s memory, and one day he’ll get a little too curious, and visit it. That’s his problem.

  Stance half-jumped, half-fell from the platform, and the crowd parted to let him through. People averted their eyes as he stumbled toward the door. He looked like nothing much, a nobody, stooped and small, his personality left behind in our memories. As he reached the door leading outside there was a brief struggle. Trigger was there, trying to hold him back. With a final show of strength Stance flung his son from him and hauled open the door.

  Snow flurried in. The Great Freeze had begun.

  Stance walked outside.

  Somebody shut the door quickly. Lonessa looked at me. “It’s up to you now, Hardy. The freeze is here. I hope to Phu you’re right about the lorin.”

  Meanwhile Cuff had turned an unpleasant look on me, reminiscent of earlier days. “If you knew Stance’s memory was defective you should have told us. You allowed us to be led by a charlatan. I find that hard to forgive.”

  “I couldn’t tell anyone, Cuff. They’d have blabbed it out and Stance would have got to hear of it and been prepared. I had to wait for an opportune moment with a big audience.”

  “But it didn’t work, did it?”

  “It laid the foundation of doubt. Anyway,” it occurred to me that I had a grievance of my own, “why didn’t you tell me Stance killed my dad?” Little things came back to me. The sudden change in appearance of Stance’s ceremonial hunting spear. Overhearing Walleye’s words as he stood beside the creek. ‘They must not know about this. That’s the last thing we want at this time. It’s important we pull together.’ The dying Walleye whispering to his son. The odd looks Cuff had given me from time to time. “You’ve known for a long time, you freezer! You should have told me!”

  Surprisingly, his expression changed and he chuckled. “The time was not ripe. You might have blabbed it out at an inopportune moment.”

  After a moment I found myself smiling back. “You could be right.”

  “Mind you,” he said, “It was Yam May who set everything off for us. Stroke of genius, shaking the bench.” I noticed his admiring glance at May and put two and two together. His rank was high enough to discourage criticism if he and May got together. Perhaps another barrier was about to fall.

  We climbed from the bench. We needed a conference before we could address our people again. Our people. I savored the thought.

  “All the same,” said Cuff thoughtfully, “I find it odd that your dad didn’t tell Yam about Stance, and take over himself. I’m sure I would have done.”

  “Just loyalty,” said Spring, who had joined us. “Bruno was always loyal, to everyone. Including me.” Her eyes were bright as she remembered.

  “And Stance repaid the loyalty by killing Bruno,” said Cuff.

  “Stance couldn’t understand Bruno was that kind of man. He just naturally didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust Hardy either because he thought Hardy would find out about him from Bruno’s memories, sooner or later. Neither did he trust his own father. What a way to live. I don’t know what he feared the most: the future without Bruno, or being betrayed by him. Bruno always told me he was watching his back. But he thought he was safe in Noss.”

  “Stance was a treacherous freezer,” said Cuff. “I never did like him.”

  At that moment Trigger rejoined us. His young cheeks were wet with tears. “Can’t you realize what it’s like to be different, and how you’d do anything to fit in, to try to show you’re not different?” he said. “Dad knew. And he had his loyalty, too. To his son. Me.”

  Stardreamers are used to seeing things from many points of view. In that moment I pitied Stance, and I pitied Trigger.

  Then Silly May said, “You can always accept the way you are and make the most of it.”

  “People won’t let you,” said Trigger. “You should know that.”

  Strange, how quickly euphoria wears off. A few moments earlier the most important thing in the world had been the deposing of my uncle. Now it was done and I’d experienced a brief moment of elation as I’d stood with my allies and gloated.

  Then suddenly it was all gone, and I was standing in a dank, grim chamber among a great number of people, many of whom expected me to save their lives for them. They’d formed little chattering groups squatting around small fires on the floor, and from time to time they would glance my way. Trustingly. I’d stardreamed right back to the previous Great Freeze. I was their rightful leader. They were waiting for a sign.

  Mister McNeil coughed, waving a drift of smoke away from his face. “I’ll bet the people down below died of oxygen starvation rather than cold and hung
er,” he said. “Can’t we do something about these fires?”

  “They’ll panic if they don’t have warmth,” Lonessa pointed out.

  “So what shall we do now?” asked Cuff.

  “Withdraw to Stance’s chamber and talk about it,” I said. “I can’t think while all these people are looking at me.”

  We reassembled in the next room, shutting the door. I found Silly May had come too, which didn’t surprise me. I was surprised to see Trigger with us, though.

  “All right,” I said, “Let’s have some ideas.”

  “You’ve promised we’ll be safe with the lorin,” said Trigger somewhat spitefully. “You’ve got to come through with it. How, is up to you.”

  “We’re all in this together, Trigger,” Charm reminded him. “If you can’t be constructive, at least get out of here.”

  He muttered something I didn’t catch and retreated to the outside of the group.

  “You said the lorin caves are at Arrow Forest,” said Lonessa. “The cave-cow, you called it. We can’t all walk there now the freeze has started. Could Mister McNeil ferry people in his buggy?”

  The human shook his head. “It’s too far. A few days ago I might have stood a chance. But now the snow’s started. I’d get bogged down after the first couple of trips, and I could only take three or four passengers at a time.”

  “So you could take the seven of us in two trips,” said Trigger eagerly.

  “Forget it,” I told him. “There’s other people.”

  “But somebody has to start everything going again once the freeze is over!”

  “This is happening all over the world, remember? There’ll be people who’ve moved faster than us. People who remembered, and put their faith in the lorin, and are asleep in cave-cows right now. They’ll start things up after the freeze. It really doesn’t matter too much if we don’t make it.”

  “It matters to me!”

  He was becoming a nuisance. “May, would you please take him into a corner and talk some sense into him. I don’t want him out there with everyone else, spreading panic.”