Priam's Lens

by Chalker, Jack L

  It was a long time until morning.

  Morning, in fact, brought little relief and not much comfort, except that he’d determined that this was as far as he would or could come. Today he would observe as Father Alex had asked him to do, even with a pounding headache and feeling a little dizzy, and then he’d make his way down as fast as he safely could. He found his body was covered with small bites, most of which itched something fierce but none of which seemed to have a poison that might cause him any long-term harm. Some clearly couldn’t get through his tough, leathery skin.

  Emerging from the warm, moist cave, though, he found himself suddenly in a dawn only a few degrees above freezing, and this made him feel frozen all over. He ate two of the bars, tried to rub some circulation back into his limbs, and then found a ledge that seemed designed for the JACK L. CHALKER purpose Father Alex had in mind. In fact, it absolutely looked as if somebody had built it, probably the ancients who had used this trail in those faraway times. They wanted a place to stop and relax and view the spectacular panorama in front of them. He had the same objective, but while the beauty wasn’t lost on him, he wasn’t wearing what they almost certainly had been, and that made a lot of difference in landscape appreciation. All he wanted now was down, but until he got what he came for, that was a direction he could not go.

  The valley that had been so vast when they’d camped in it seemed almost like a small crack, with a series of waterfalls going off the sides of the mountain and feeding, perhaps creating, the river that in turn had carved it. He could follow the river, which tradition named the Styx, from its meandering reflection in the rapidly rising sunshine.

  The plain was also smaller than it seemed, although certainly it stretched far enough. He could see the larger rivers and other basic landmarks, including the rock where the ghost might still wait, although it looked like a tiny speck, and then way beyond.

  The grasslands spread out in all directions. There were a few groves of trees here and there, but mostly the plain was treeless. Grass and grains much taller than a man covered it all. When the wind came in, the grass blew and seemed like a vast sea—not grass at all but water whose waves gently traversed the horizon, were in constant motion. He knew that down in those grasses were bushes and small trees that got no direct sun energy but produced various fruits and vegetables. Others were all over in between the grasses just growing wild in the ground, but they were evident only as slightly darker patches on the grassland quilt.

  In the center of the plain, in the one area where people did not go, were the demon flowers. They were certainly pretty, particularly from up here, and as tall as the grasses, and with enormous flowers of golds and purples and reds and even silvers. They too, moved in unison, as if pushed by the winds, but, curiously, not as the grasses nearby moved. Rather, it was almost as if those flowers were blown by a different wind, a demon wind only they could feel.

  He realized that the three Families that the plain supported had a system wherein they went round and round the demon garden in a series of overlapping circles until they reached common outer boundaries like the valley, after which they began to spiral back. Each of the three Families met the two others at some point without ever traversing the center or the same groves. It struck him that the so-called randomness of Family movements was anything but. They were as predictable as the times of the moons. If the demons were not stupid, which they certainly were not, and the Hunters were in any way competent, which they certainly were, then at any time at all the Families were, in fact, vulnerable targets. They hid well, but what is the good of hiding if your enemies know exactly where you are?

  And with that it struck him that the Families had to be something different than they thought they were. If the demons and the Hunters, the forces of evil, could get them at any time, then they were being allowed to survive. Or, perhaps, they were simply ignored unless they got in the way of whatever the others happened to be doing.

  The grassland plain was vast, but, off in the distance on both sides, he could see other mountain ranges, and he understood then that it was actually a kind of bowl. Only a three-sided bowl, though, for directly in front of him, almost at the horizon even at this height, was the great ocean, and to the far western side, probably where the distant ranges met the sea, was the city of the demons.

  You couldn’t miss it. Even from this far away, countless kilometers if he’d had any way to measure or truly understand the measurement, the eerie and huge place throbbed and radiated with energy and light. Unlike the sun, you could look at it, but what you saw made little sense. Bright, throbbing, an elongated egg shape from the look of it, with a single dark line dividing it into two equal halves horizontally. Smaller versions flanked it, and in back two bloblike towers rose.

  Father Alex had said not to look, but it was difficult not to, even though the danger was most certainly there. How could they, so very far away, possibly know if one little man was staring at their city?

  But they did know. They, or something of them. As he stared, finding it harder and harder to take his eyes off the distant alien-looking city, which had to be enormous to be so clear from this vantage point, he found himself almost going into a trance; the chill and the lack of oxygen and the fatigue just seemed to drain away. Not that they were gone—they just didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  And suddenly he saw that there was far more out there than had ever been apparent. Thin lines that looked to be made of nothing solid, of nothing he could comprehend, all over the sky, above him, below him, creating a complex but highly geometric three-dimensional grid that linked up with the distant city on the one hand and with certain points in the high mountains on either side and behind him somewhere. He had never seen them before, and did not understand why he had not, nor what they could possibly be, but they covered everything, the whole of creation.

  He didn’t actually feel their presence, either; nothing rummaged in his mind, possibly because it already knew that there was nothing of interest to it there. But, slowly, without his even realizing it, it was as if a part of him was being drawn out, as if scum were skimmed off the top of standing water, or more like the wisps of cloud that made Littlefeet who he was just breaking off and lazily drifting out over the edge and above the plain toward that distant strange sight.

  As if something cared not about his body but was skimming off his soul.

  A thick cloud broke off and away behind him and slowly drifted overhead, darkening the lookout and dropping the temperature. It continued on, sinking as it went until he suddenly found himself in a chill fog unable to see the distant place. It felt like a connection had been broken, and at once the discomfort was all too real.

  Still, he felt not fear or anger but confusion. It was odd; he couldn’t seem to remember who he was, or where he was, or why he was there. It was as if the humanity had been drained from him, leaving him only basic animal reasoning. He was tired and he was cold. He carefully made his way back toward the trail, which some remaining instinct said was the safe way to go, and then he started down, just wanting out of there, down from there, and out of the cold, wet cloud.

  He had no idea then or later how he got down; everything was a total blur. When they found him, wandering near the base of the mountain near the entrance to the valley, he was dazed, confused, and didn’t seem to recognize anyone.

  Father Alex rushed to him as soon as he heard. The scouts who discovered the boy were quite right not to bring him back into the camp; no matter how well they knew him, they dared not risk the entire Family on what might have been a possession, conversion, or some other kind of trap using him. Besides, there were still a dozen unexplained dead men not far away.

  “Littlefeet!” Father Alex snapped. “Look at me! Look at me! Look directly into my eyes. Look only at me! Look!” He reached out and his powerful hands forced the young man’s head to face him. “Now speak! Speak! Say anything at all! Who am I? What is my name?”

  Littlefeet’s field of vision fille
d with nothing but the ruddy-faced bearded man’s stern face and penetrating eyes. He was unable to turn away because of the strength of the priest’s hands; he had to stare directly into them and listen to the shouting. Something inside him told him that he was in no danger here; that these were friends. Kin. Family...

  “I—I—” he tried, but then he simply collapsed, limp, unconscious on the ground. Father Alex let him fall, then checked to be sure that Littlefeet had simply passed out and wasn’t dead.

  “Bind him,” he instructed the warriors who stood close by, watching none too comfortably. “Run a spear through the bindings on his hands and feet and we’ll carry him suspended that way. I do not want him unbound until I can get him to come around. Give him food, drink, whatever, but he is not to be unbound, understand?”

  They didn’t like it, but they did as they were told.

  Littlefeet did not protest; he was sleeping the sleep of the dead, and it was more than two days before he awoke.

  He came around and discovered that he was bound, and he struggled, but they had done a good job. His arms were behind his back, bound together at the wrists with strong, tough vines; his feet were also brought back and bound, then hands and feet had been tied together. They had varied this now and again to ensure that circulation wasn’t cut forever, but otherwise he was on his side and unable to move more than his head and neck.

  They had moved in the patterns, he sensed. This was not where he had left them nor where they had found him, but, nonetheless, they were where they were supposed to be.

  The guard went and fetched Father Alex right away, even though it was dark and the priest was actually settling down for the night. He wasted no time making it over to Littlefeet.

  “Can you talk?” the priest asked him gently.

  “T—taaaal-ka? Taalk! Talk...,” he managed. It was hard to speak; the words would not come.

  Father Alex sat the young man up against a rock and, with the aid of the guard, retied him so that his arms and legs were no longer bound together, but were still bound. It was then a long, patient night drawing him out, bit by bit.

  In many ways, Father Alex thought, it was as if the boy—to him, Littlefeet was still a boy, no matter what the Family said—had suffered a brain seizure. Knowledge of medicine was pretty well faded, but he understood that much, and had seen its effects. He’d also seen this sort of thing before, with a more troubling cause—the one he rightly suspected had done it here.

  Littlefeet was slowly regaining conversational abilities, but on a limited basis, having to think out each word as if doing so for the first time. It gave him a kind of pidgin that was useful for communication on some level, but it wasn’t normal by any means. Father Alex knew that the lasting effects went in different ways depending on a lot of factors. Littlefeet might always have some problems, they might go away quickly or slowly over time, or he might suffer a second stroke and either die or be as good as dead. A lot depended on getting the sufferer back to some kind of activity quickly.

  Even so, it was morning before a tired but satisfied priest had him to where progress was clear.

  “What is your name?”

  “No—no can think name.”

  “You are Littlefeet. Can you say that?”

  “Li—Li’l... No.”

  It was tough on him, and he could see the young man was going through inner agony.

  “Name,” Littlefeet repeated. “No names in head. Like all gone. Know you, know me, know them, no names.”

  Over the next couple of days he was allowed a limited freedom, always under guard but no longer bound, and was able to physically recover to some extent.

  “Some of it is venom,” Mother Paulista said after examining him. “He was bit repeatedly by rock spiders and some other things I cannot imagine. It is likely he got a terrible fever from it. Such fevers are known to damage minds.”

  Father Alex accepted that this was the probable cause of much of it, but not all. Littlefeet had become conversant enough to tell, in somewhat broken sentences, what he had seen up there, high in the mountains, and once he’d gotten past water as a white solid and warm, wet caves and the like, he’d told of looking out over the vastness of the world.

  “You looked at the demon city, didn’t you?” the priest pressed. “You looked even though you were warned not to, and it started to steal something from you.”

  Littlefeet nodded. “Yes. Steal what be me.” He paused. “Steal names. My name. Your name. All names.”

  Memory was coming back, not as a flood but in bits and pieces, and there were whole experiences that were quite firm, from his first night of manhood to scouting the rock, but while the faces were there the names did not come back, and when he heard the names, it was as if he’d never heard them before even if they were constantly repeated, and as soon as the person left his sight, the name vanished from his mind.

  “What did you see up there? What did you see that made you upset?” the priest pressed, knowing that Littlefeet had several times made references to intangible threats.

  “Shapes. Dancing Fam’lies.” He brought up his right hand and started tracing with his index finger. “Dance here and here and here and here, till you get here. Then you dance and dance backward to here.”

  “Who is dancing? Or what?”

  “Us. We dance. Fam’lies dance. Fam’lies dance Everybody know but the dancers...”

  There was something here, the priest knew, enough to discuss it with both the male and female elders of the Family, but what did it mean? Littlefeet had given up a part of himself but he had gained some kind of information, perhaps insight, that the Family as a whole did not have. This, too, had happened before, but just what wisdom had been imparted wasn’t clear.

  “The other thing he speaks about often is lines. Pretty lines,” the priest told the gathering of elders. “Lines in the air that crisscross. I had him try drawing what he meant, and he came up with this.” Taking a stick, Father Alex wiped a dirt area clear and then drew a set of intersecting lines.

  “A grid, that is what it was called,” said Perry, the oldest and therefore senior of the guard. He might have been as old as the priest, and looked even older. “We still use it, in a sense, to know where things are from season to season.”

  “These are on the ground?” Mother Paulista asked, confused.

  “No, no, Mother! In our heads. We learn the grids as you learn the scriptures, and teach it to our next generations. It does not even resemble a grid at this point, but we use these kinds of dirt drawings to show where we go the next time, and the next, and where the water is, and so on. Our scouts use this knowledge to find the best places.”

  “I don’t think he means on the ground,” Father Alex agreed. “I think he means that he saw some kind of grid that went up to the sky as well as from horizon to horizon. It’s not there now, or, most likely, we can’t see it, but he is convinced of its reality.”

  “Stuff and nonsense! Fever delirium, that’s all it is!” Paulista huffed.

  “Perhaps not. Perhaps the demons use this grid somehow, and if you are high enough up there it becomes visible because you are looking at it from a different, downward angle. It could be any number of things, but the fact that he saw a grid, I think, is real. Others have reported this in times past, although not quite so clearly. The question is, what is it for and does it threaten us?”

  “It can’t!” argued not only Mother Paulista but many others, including Perry. “It surely would have been there since the Great Fall, and it has meant nothing to us or our survival even if it has been there all this time!”

  Father Alex was not so sanguine. All the Families in a dance, a whirling dance to here, then they stop and dance backward...

  According to a grid? A dance was a structured thing, whether done for pleasure or in ritual. It had to be. Something Perry said about the grid they memorized and passed on...

  If it was random, why did they need a grid? And if it wasn’t...?

&nb
sp; He decided for now not to press that point, but he was beginning to see what Littlefeet was getting at. We’re all afraid of becoming pets, of becoming animals wandering the garden, just another bunch of animals in the demon groves. What if they already were? What if they were and didn’t even realize it?

  The more he thought about it, the more obvious it became, and the more frightening. This was suddenly so obvious, since it was so much of a ritualistic pattern in how and when and where they moved and camped, that it was incredible that nobody had seen it until now. Others had climbed, and others had also experienced the kind of terrible insight that Littlefeet had, but not that kind of information.

  Why not?

  Littlefeet had learned it at the cost of forgetting all names, even his own. What if that wasn’t an effect of fever? Even Mother Paulista, who was always so keen to ascribe every bad thing to demonic plots and faithlessness among the people, had dismissed this as nonsense and the ravings of fever.

  Had the ability of most of the people to follow this logic somehow been stolen from them in the night? Was there information, memory, certain processes that they were blind to?

  That was a discomforting thought, but also a dead end. If you had been somehow influenced not to think of certain things or to see certain things, then how would you ever know?

  And, if that were so, why did he see it now? He hadn’t been up there.

  Not in twenty years, anyway...

  EIGHT

  Riding the Keel

  The daily briefing for all who had been stuck for so long aboard the Odysseus was getting to be a real yawner, but as long as they were in the project and somebody else was paying the bill, attendance was mandatory.

  This particular briefing, however, had some excitement attached to it, and they sat there, waiting, with slight but palpable anticipation that, perhaps, at last they were going to move.