“But,” she said, continuing with a lift of one gnarled finger, “sometimes you will encounter a society that has harnessed science in service to superstition.” She shrugged, as if amazed by the tremendous variation humans were capable of. “These worlds are promising, as few things in our experience drive innovation further than religious fervor. So if you visit one, you will need to likely penetrate the inner circle of the religion to be sure of what you are dealing with.” She grinned at them. “Religions like to hide things. This is in their nature.”
That was his take on this place. There was religion here, some sort of festival-based deity worship here. He didn’t know the language, and it had no analogue the Center knew. So he had on his Friendly Mute persona. It had served him well on a few missions. He was not big and intimidating like Mak, or quick-witted like Jin. He had fashioned this disguise over time, realizing that most people wanted to avoid those with disorders, diseases, or disabilities. So here he was Tarl the Mute. It had opened doors for him on four worlds so far, and this would be the fifth.
He hefted the basket of fruit and followed the skinny old man through the complex. He looked neither left nor right, counting on his peripheral vision to capture whatever data it could, but not expose him as too curious. He wasn’t curious about this place, nor these people and how they lived. Two years before, he would have been, but not now. He stayed single-minded, as much as he could. The old man went right, he went right. Follow his skinny brown legs and stained loincloth. Carry the basket to wherever it was going, then see if he could get conveniently lost.
Twelve missions since Sea World, the world with the floating platforms. This would be his fifteenth, and in less than a year. He led the Black House in missions, with Mak being the nearest behind him, with ten. And Tarl meant to keep that lead, to widen it, to do the most and be the best. He thought of Sea World, the towering, rust-pocked superstructure. The woman in the peaked cap with the questions. He had told her no lies. He had killed her.
Her and everyone else on that Earth, on that thread. The Boy, of course, had been right. He saw that now. They must preserve the Center. No threats tolerated, however small. The stakes were too high. Grandmother, when he had been summoned to her the next day, had explained it in more detail, but he understood well enough. Protect the Center. People elsewhere are dangerous threats.
“What you did was bad,” Grandmother had said, after welcoming him to sit next to her on a stone bench in a courtyard near her apartments. The sun had warmed the stone, and it felt pleasant on his palms as he sat, awkwardly, next to her.
“I understand,” he said. His voice rasped. He was tired, having been up all night in his bunk, unable to sleep. “I disregarded the rules and risked the Work.”
She nodded. “I think he may have overreacted, a bit.” She shrugged. “But I cannot second-guess him. I am not close enough to it. This is his function. Continuity. Preservation.” She smiled a wan smile. “Let it be a guide to you, this world and what happened to it.”
So he had. It had unlocked something inside him. He started hauling himself out of bed with the sun and running the Trainee obstacle courses he had loathed a few years earlier. He studied hard, every mission, peppering the Archivist staff with questions and suggestions. In simulation review sessions, which all Seekers did several times a week, he was attentive and thoughtful, posing questions and raising ideas that led to lively discussions. He even started scoring hits on Shona, occasionally, though she still threw him in the dirt more often than not. She’d grin at him and help him up. He avoided Murn and kept his mind on the Work and preparing for his missions.
He had arrived here this morning, blinking in a few hundred meters away from the main complex, deep in the trees. The jungle was a preserve, the Archivists had said. Beyond it was a vast city, home to millions of people. Tarl could smell them. Garbage and dust. A river flowed through the city, and they kept the jungle, the Archivists reasoned, to protect this temple complex. The temple itself drew much power and had complex communications and data feeds leading in and out. It was not just a stone ruin, preserved out of religious tradition…there was something more going on here. The Archivists were sure.
Tarl had stepped out of the jungle, hoping his clothes were appropriate, and joined the throng streaming in towards the temple.
Along the way he spied the truck being unloaded, and had joined in, snatching a basket from a pile and joining the noisy queue of porters at the back of the truck. A young boy was dumping cloth bags of golden yellow fruit into baskets, which had tiny yellow bells tied around their rims. He hoisted his basket, bracing himself for the shock of the cascade of fruit as the boy dumped a bag into it. Then other aspiring porters pushed him aside, and he had followed the old man ahead of him.
A stream cut through the compound, and the old man headed for a narrow point in the stone channel it ran through. The water was white and foamy, and as Tarl approached, he smelled it. Chemicals, or some mineral springs, fed it perhaps. It was rank and sharp with a hot reek. Tarl intentionally slipped and went in up to his knees, almost dropping his basket into it.
One priest, lounging nearby, cried out when he saw this, and gesticulated to Tarl to get out of the water, jabbering at him with his strange, sibilant speech. The man was fat and brown, wearing only a loose towel-like kilt that fell below his knees. He waved a paper fan at Tarl in dismissal.
Tarl just grinned at him and hoisted the fruit basket on his back again. He looked for the old man, who had not slowed for Tarl. Tarl wondered if he even knew he was following him. He was well behind the man now, and so he hurried to keep up. He had rounded a corner of an outbuilding, and Tarl stumbled along after him.
At the corner he found himself on a wide street leading deeper into the complex. It looked very old, flanked every few dozen paces by a weathered stone statue of a woman. Tarl knew she was a woman by the curve of her hips and prominent breasts. No two of the statues were alike, and some seemed more weathered or older than others. One wore a robe, and as he passed, he saw they had smeared the pocked stone face with thick yellow paste.
He was in the pilgrimage's thick flow now, and all around him dozens of visitors crowded. There were men and women, the men dressed mostly in white robes, and the women in yellow ones, though not only. Some of the men wore what looked like uniforms, close fitting knit affairs that looked sweltering in the damp, sticky heat. These men, if they were security, seemed lax to Tarl, having seen attentive police in other places. These men were grinning and laughing, talking with people and seemed caught up in the festive, carnival-like atmosphere. They did not give Tarl a second glance as he struggled through the crowd.
At first, as the crowd had swept him up in the broad road with the procession, he had worried there were too many people for him to keep track of the old man. But he realized he needn’t have worried. The crowd seemed to part before him, as with each step the bells tied to the rim of the basket jingled and tinkled. The basket he carried on his back, strap around his forehead, seemed to be part of the festival. He worked his way down the long road towards what looked like a large pavilion, full of what sounded like a chanting multitude. Hands reached out to lightly touch the bells of his basket as he passed, and people nodded to him, smiling, as they made way for him. Tarl smiled his best Dumb Tarl smile and walked on.
As he approached the pavilion, he realized it was merely the entrance to a large amphitheater, and that the bowl-shaped depression in the earth was larger than anything he had ever seen before. It was a massive disk, many hundreds of paces wide, and crowded with folk streaming through it. He followed the crowd down into it, and was, at one point, pushed into a track he realized was only populated with bearers of baskets like himself. They had worn the track into the stone of the ground, worn by years of many feet. How many years? Centuries?
The others, men and women, wearing either yellow or white, had split into two groups, so that the white-clad men and the yellow-clad women filed through the arena li
ke two colored rivers, with a line of porters splitting them. There were rivers of these tracks spread throughout the amphitheater, all about an arm’s span wide, and each arcing and then bending back towards the same point. All were heading, it seemed, to an exit on the north side of the disk, where there was a tower or mound of some sort that he could see rising above the heads of the pilgrims in front of him.
All were chanting. Ummma roooma Ummma roooooma rooooooooma. It was a soft-chant, low in the throat, but the many thousand chanters made it loud, almost overpowering. Tarl realized he had never seen this many people in one place before in his life. It struck him with a sudden panic he had to clench his jaw against to quell. Not here, he willed himself. Keep your cool. He looked at the faces of those around him; they were beatific, smiling, radiant. Mothers cradled babies to their breasts in slings, and fathers held their smaller children above their heads to see. The chant echoed around the circular disk of the amphitheater, bouncing off the high walls to amplify the sound until it drowned out almost all else.
He was nearing what he thought must be the end of the amphitheater, as the walls were rising steeply to both his right and left, and the various lanes of pilgrims were merging on both his left and right. They seemed to converge at a point ahead of him, where the mound he had glimpsed briefly from the entrance had been. He caught a scent of something on the wind, and then realized it was fruit, the golden-skinned citrus he carried in his basket. He realized he had been smelling it for some time in the arena, but it was growing stronger. Faintly at first, it had grown in strength as he approached the mound, and now it was almost overpowering.
As he approached the mound, he saw that there were steps, broad and flat, which his track mounted, while the others did not. Soon only he and the porters were climbing up above the rivers of pilgrims, all chanting with increased fervor and volume now, as they reached the end of the procession, the goal of their pilgrimage. The reek of the golden fruits was overpowering now, sharp and acidic in his nose. He blinked and felt his eyes sting. The mound, he realized, as he was climbing up it, surrounded a set of stout wooden stairs almost buried in fruit. The mound was fruit.
He was about thirty or forty paces behind the other porters, and he saw, craning his neck, that the porters who had reached the top were spiraling down a staircase that led off to the side of the mound. He saw several of them tossing their baskets into a small stream that ran away out of the arena, under twin stone bridges to the left and right of the mound of golden, stinking fruit.
He watched as the pilgrims, still chanting their ummma roooma song, reached over the wide stone parapet of the bridges to snatch a piece of the fruit, as it tumbled down the steep sides of the mound. The fruit at the bottom was being crushed, he thought to himself, which explains the reek of the things. Why? He shook his head.
“Religion,” Grandmother had lectured, “is ineffable. You cannot understand it, so do not try. It is not yours to partake of, except as a ruse, or a deception, or out of politeness. Do not seek to apply logic to it or pass your judgement on it. It is all,” she said with emphasis, “nonsense.” She had looked down at them, “But it can be useful nonsense,” she added, smiling grimly. “Therefore, it persists, and we find it everywhere we look. It is a very human thing.”
Religion controls. This was another mantra of hers. Religion explains, yes, but it controls. People who believe in absurdities will do absurd things to protect their beliefs. Do not judge, and above all don’t argue with them about it. Serve the mission and use their beliefs against them if you need to.
This was, he thought, definitely absurd. Thousands of the golden fruit trampled underfoot, and the tramping feet had thrown up a thin mist of vaporized juice. Tarl could feel it on his skin, the lightest coolness settling on his face, chest, and arms. He tasted it, a sour rankness, spiced with something he couldn’t quite place. His eyes began to water from it, and tears flowed down his face.
Those nearby also wept, he saw. Women and men, children, all with tears streaming from their eyes. Men laughed, as they beheld each other, and their families, all wet-eyed and blinking. They staggered, and he saw mothers tighten their grips on small children, squalling in discomfort as they climbed out of the theater.
Then he was near the top, just a few paces away. To the left and right of him the mound of fruit, easily three or four times his height, fell away to both sides. At the top was a platform, wide and stout, with a railing all around. There was a hole in the platform, through which Tarl could see the tip of the mound of fruit, peaked to a cross-section as large as him, then squared off to a wide flatness. And there was a woman.
There were priests, bare-chested men and women of all ages, browned by the sun, some with their skin covered in particolored muds or paints. He registered them there, even noting what they wore, carried, and their tactical locations. But the woman was all he saw.
She was nude, or nearly, he saw. A strip of white cloth bunched around her waist as she sprawled, back arched, knees apart, head lolling backwards. She lay atop the massive mound of fruit, and each porter would dump his basket load of fruit in between her knees, then scamper aside with his basket, eyes streaming, chanting the incessant hymn. She is asleep, Tarl thought. And lovely.
She was long and lean, trim and muscular. Olive brown skin, raven black hair, slick and damp, hung down behind her lolling head. She wore a crown, he saw, a double circlet tight on her brow. As he approached, behind the next man to step up, Tarl felt his pulse quicken. Was she a sacrifice? He had learned of such practices in the Archives.
Humanity was often a horror, Neema had told them. Look at this place, or this one, or, worse still, this one. Was this such a place? Tarl wondered. He saw then that she wasn’t lying on top of the mound; they had suspended her just above it. A padded strap around her waist attached to a silver wire, thin as a string, rose to the slatted roof of the canopy.
A priest, an aged woman, old as Grandmother, Tarl thought, head and chest painted a bright gold, stepped forward. With a gnarled hand she guided the man’s basket down between the woman’s thighs, upended it, and the golden fruit tumbled out. She waved her hand at the man in some sort of ritual blessing, Tarl thought, dismissive and perfunctory at him, and the man bowed and scampered off with his basket.
Then it was Tarl’s turn. Roooma, Tarl chanted with the rest and stepped forward, extending the basket. He was about to break into his Stupid Grin, at the old woman, when he paused.
The woman on the mound had stirred. She had her head up, still lolling to one side. One eye opened, circled lazily, then focused. On him. It met his eyes, and the woman sat up. In one fluid motion she flowed forward, looping one arm around the wire and swinging herself lightly upon the platform. The old priestess stepped back, a shocked “O” on her lips, then she cast her eyes downward, and stepped away.
The woman stood in front of Tarl. She was studying him intently now. He gaped at her, the last “aaa” from his roooomaaa chant trailing from his lips.
With a practiced flick of her wrist, Tarl watched as she looked back and up and guided the wire along a track set into the canopy roof. She saw him watching the track, saw him noting the wire that led to her belt, then tracing in a thin silver strand up her back, to connect, somewhere buried in her damp, black hair, with her crown. Her eyebrows raised as she met his eyes.
She spoke, a long string of fluid sibilance that he did not follow, and could barely hear above the crowd. None of the crowd had yet noticed that the woman, this queen, had stood up upon the platform. Their eyes streamed with tears, Tarl remembered, he could barely see her through his. Her eyes did not leak tears, he noticed. He closed his mouth, and set his basket gently down, shaking his head. The chanting continued all around him, drowning out everything, even thought.
She smiled and stepped closer, then she leaned in closer still. She looked down on him; she was taller by several fingers, he realized sourly. He could smell her, a hot electric smell, coppery and sharp as pepper. His face
grew warm, and he blinked furiously at the tears welling from his eyes.
“You came back,” she said, in perfect Romanian Latin, pressing her face in close enough that he felt her breath warm and wet in his ear. “So very, very long.”
He recoiled. Impossible. He gibbered at her. He glanced left, and right, seeking an avenue of escape. He felt the priests were watching him, as they all turned towards him. Several seemed poised and ready to pounce upon him at her word, vague shapes with their arms wide in his peripheral vision. How? He was trapped.
He looked back at her, his wits returning slowly. He blinked at his tears and said, also in that language. “I do not know you, Lady.”
She laughed, her even teeth bright in the gloom of the shaded canopy. Someone in the procession must have seen her, and passed the word, and a great cry went up among the multitude, disrupting the roomaumma chanting into a general huzzah, a great outpouring of joy and surprise. Tarl, looking at the cheering crowds, saw faces rapt with joy as they struggled to see. Men were holding their children high and shouting acclamations.
Tarl looked at the woman’s face and saw the shadow of anger and disgust pass over it. A dark and deepening shadow, as she raised her hands to her temples in frustration, her eyes widening and her jaw clenching. She winced, and then her hands chopped through a sharp, jerky single wave, and every voice in the entire amphitheater was silenced.
The woman let out a long, shuddering breath. “Excuse them,” she said. “They didn’t know you were coming,” she said, scathingly, eyes scanning over the assembled priests. “If they had,” she continued acidly. “They might have fucking told me.”
She turned back to Tarl, smiling gently at him. “You left and came back. Third time’s the charm, right?” She grinned. “Isn’t that what they said, in that place?”
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