by Jim Grimsley
Dekkar, for once, was making sound, singing, a sound so eerie Figg wished it would stop, and he covered his ears with his hands, looking down at the bloody mess of Keely’s face.
But the thing was gone now and they were all right. Silence, quiet, overtook the Erra Bel. Pel set the boat heading along the center of the current again, as far from both shores as possible. Penelope clambered onto Figg’s head, set her legs into the sockets there and flattened against his skull. Zhengzhou stirred from her hiding place, behind a counter in the galley near the stern. Kitra stood behind Figg, a hand on one shoulder, then faced Dekkar, her arms folded.
“You should never have brought her if you couldn’t control her.”
He gave her a look so dark she stepped back. He knelt, peering into Keely’s ruined face, the glistening of the liquid from inside the boy’s eyes still draining onto his acid-burned cheeks. His lower lip and chin had been spared; the rest of his face was a charred burn. The smell was nauseating. Dekkar studied it, closed his eyes, drew in a long breath, and the familiar look of serenity settled over him. None of the eerie singing from moments ago reached Figg’s hearing; Dekkar took on the quiet, removed look that had been his only mark when doing his work, using his true language, or whatever he called it. Keely murmured, and a wave passed through his face.
“Is he in pain?” Figg asked, looking at the pitted skin.
“No. He has some kind of control of it.”
“What did that thing do?”
“Injected something into him. Not just acid, something else.”
Figg’s own sores were swollen again, painful to the touch. “The same thing the other one did to me?”
“No. Different viruses from the ones they put into you. The viruses you got were to kill you. The ones in Keely are carriers. They’re delivering some kind of cargo. And the acid is deliberate; she wanted to maim him and blind him.”
Kitra crossed her arms and paced to the pilot’s wheel, standing behind the pilot, shaking her head. Her terror was plain; Figg could feel it. He had become, without warning, sensitive to everything Kitra was feeling, ever since he woke to find her lying next to him, frightened, taking comfort from his warmth—certainly not from his courage, since he was as shaken as she.
“They’re preparing Keely to meet the God.”
“What God?” Zhengzhou asked, timid, emerging from the back of the boat, crawling over the folded form of the Hilda, which had deactivated itself.
“Rao. The thing that’s here. The thing that was speaking through the creature’s mouth.”
“You call him a god?” Zhengzhou tittered nervously, glancing out the window at the rain and the river, running fingers through her hair.
“They call themselves gods. I don’t know what to call them.” Dekkar knelt again, touched Keely’s face; the boy sighed in his rest, turned toward Figg, breathed into his middle. Figg felt warm all through, anchored to the real world by the fact of Keely, the weight of Keely’s head. Some of Figg’s fear left him.
Pel announced, from the pilot’s console, “There are boats blocking the river ahead of us.”
“They’ll let us pass,” Dekkar said.
Sure enough, after a moment, Pel said, “You’re right. They’re parting to make a lane.”
“She doesn’t want me to kill any more trees than necessary,” Dekkar said. “She knows it will be easy enough to finish me when I’m farther north, closer to Rao.”
“Is that true?” Kitra asked.
He stood motionless in the center of the boat, still in the same spot as when he made the Nerva-thing dissolve and vanish. Now he appeared more shrunken, maybe even a bit stooped. “Yes. It is.”
“They’ll kill you?”
“Most likely.”
“What about us?”
“I don’t know. Pel will try to take care of you, I suppose.”
She glared at him, trembling. “That’s it? That’s all you have?”
He gazed at her somberly. “What do you expect?”
“Why are you going north if it’s going to kill you, why aren’t you talking about destroying this thing, Rao? I thought that’s what you had in mind.”
He shook his head. “No.”
She was stupefied, and made something of a show of it. “Then what?”
“I’m here because it’s where I was sent. I never expected to live through this. I don’t know whether you will or not. Probably not. I brought you here because there was nowhere to leave you. There aren’t any people alive on the southern continent, and pretty soon the northern population is going to be enslaved by these Dirijhi allies of theirs.”
“Enslaved?”
“Breeding stock. For tree symbionts. And forced labor for the Shimmering Garden. That’s what the trees call this place, you know. The Shimmering Garden.”
Kitra looked irritated. “Yes, I know. I grew up here.”
“Quite right, you did. I’d forgotten.”
She blinked at him. Maybe she was remembering, as Figg was, the sudden attack on the river town. “You forget how long I’ve worked with the Prin. On your own you can’t know anything of the kind.”
He looked at her. Pel, behind her, was shaking his head.
“I know what I know,” Dekkar said.
“You’re no good to anybody unless you know how to get Great Irion himself to come here.”
A light poured out of Dekkar, the wind picked up, the boat rocked, and suddenly he was difficult to see, covered with light, appearing to rise, in some fashion, through the glass of the ceiling, as if he were riding on the column of light that he had partly become. An instant later there were flashes of light, concussions, explosions on both shores, a firestorm of wind, fires raging in the broken trees flattened on either side of the river. The terrifying noise, the booming, went on and on, a moment so frozen and endless that Figg thought it would never be over. His heart pounded, the light of the explosions filling the cabin. Everyone inside instinctively ducked except Pel, who stayed at the helm and kept the boat headed upstream.
Figg backed against the wall, pulled Keely with him, huddled there. He tried not to watch the column of light that moved with the boat; something about it made him nauseous. At the stern Zhengzhou rose up on her knees to peer out the glass, her shadow framed in bright fire, in what might be more explosions. “The boats are scattered,” she said. “They’re not really following anymore.”
“Merciful Am,” Kitra said, and she crept beside Figg, sitting close to him.
“It’s a wonder to watch the wise ones work,” Pel said, voice booming. “There’s no mistaking it. Dangerous business it is, too, to be as close as we are.”
“What choice do we have?” Kitra asked.
“Damn little, you’re right about that.”
“He should never—” Her voice trembling, shaking. Figg pressed against her, and she fell silent.
“No use muttering and moaning,” Pel said. “Because, you see, it’s bad enough to be this close, but if we were any farther away, we’d like to be dead by now, sure.”
A long time passed. The boat was moving quickly, no lights along the shore, no traffic to speak of, the southern sky lit with flickering orange and red, the northern sky dark and featureless. Under the canopy of trees, the light of Dekkar echoed on the undersides of branches, dimming. For a long time he was absent from the boat, silent, until suddenly he appeared on his hands and knees in a shadowy part of the cabin near the galley, breathing deeply and evenly.
He found his feet slowly, as if he was feeling pain. Zhengzhou tried to help him and he tolerated it a bit, looking around the interior of the cabin as if not entirely sure where he was.
He stepped toward Figg, at first uncertainly. It was Keely he was watching.
“Put him on the bunk,” Dekkar said, glancing at Figg for a moment.
“Why?”
“I think I know something I can do for him. I need to try it now, while there’s time.”
“Do for him?”
&
nbsp; “To help him when he wakes up,” Dekkar said, lifting Keely out of Figg’s lap.
When Figg stood, Kitra followed. The Hilda had also unfolded, and it obeyed Dekkar’s instructions to bring water. The priest found his own pack and brought out a sack of leaves; he took one in his mouth and chewed it, put another to Keely’s wrecked mouth. The pitted face moved a bit, the leaf sliding inside a little at a time. Penelope, who had been lying near Keely like a bodyguard, skittered anxiously around his head before drawing away.
Dekkar stood over the boy; sometimes it was difficult to see what he was doing; sometimes Figg heard a phrase of singing, a clear tenor voice that was overwhelming. Sometimes Dekkar gestured: precise, small, dancelike movements of the hands. His features blurred, as if he were behind a veil. Most of the time, though, he simply stood over Keely, his eyes closed. Keely breathed peacefully, mouth working as though he were chewing the leaf.
One by one Dekkar covered Keely’s face with the leaves, pungent, a musky sharp scent, hard to put out of the mind. He wet the leaves and placed each one carefully. Each stayed in place and soon the whole mass started to dissolve, a deep green salve that looked soothing, whether it was or not. At one point Keely giggled, though Dekkar had finished placing the leaves and was nowhere near. The sound of the laugh, even for a moment, lightened Figg’s sense of horror. The boy looked as though he was trying to smile.
“You used the math box,” Keely said, and his voice was as clear as if nothing had happened to his lips.
Dekkar turned to him, stood very still. “Yes. Thank you.”
“I should have thought of it sooner.”
“You did right.” Dekkar swallowed, stepped near. “She’s gone now, for good.”
“Where are we?”
“Close,” Dekkar said. “I’m helping Pel to move us along as fast as possible.”
“The tree-woman is after us,” Keely said.
“I know.”
“Do you want me to tell you what I see?”
Dekkar knelt beside the bunk. His hair was thinning at the top, the pink scalp showing. Keely’s hair was plastered to his head. The green stuff of the leaves adhered to the burned skin and flesh, smoothing it out. Figg had an impulse to touch the child’s hair, or his flushed cheek; he had come close to Keely, too.
“Hello, Uncle Figg,” Keely said.
He swallowed. “Hello.”
“It’s all right. You can sit down.”
Figg sat carefully, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “How are you feeling, Keely?”
“Better.”
Figg looked at Dekkar, cocked his head. Dekkar said, “Himmel leaves, and thuenyn.”
“What does it do?”
“I can’t stop the changes that are happening to Keely, but I can adapt them.”
“What does that mean?”
Keely answered. “I can hear the math in my head all the time now, Uncle Figg. From the math box. I can do all the levels in it.”
He must have looked puzzled. After a moment Keely said, “You’re making a face, Uncle Figg.”
“You can see?”
“Yes.”
Dekkar nodded, touching a fingertip to the leaf-stuff. “What were you going to tell me, Keely?”
“She’s coming closer again. She’s still in the flitter.”
“What does she look like to you?”
“Like she’s made of bark, like she has tree branches for arms, like she has the insides of a person, like her face is not for making faces.”
“That’s very good.”
“She’s talking to my father.”
“He’s not your father, Keely.”
“He says he is.”
“He’s not. He’s no relation to you.”
“You remember your sister Sherry,” Figg said, heart pounding. “She was your family.”
“Sherry.” Keely said the name; one of his hands was visible, fingers making small, hesitant movements. He was trying to smile again. He sat up.
The leaves were changing texture, smoothing over his skin, nearly but not quite the shape of a face with the proper contours, a dark patch, green and shiny, smooth over the eye sockets, the lower lip intact, the upper smooth and green. He touched his fingers to his face. “That feels better.”
“So, do you remember Sherry?”
He was smiling. The green membrane made expressions; made them plain if not detailed, at least. “Sherry was my sister. She was my real family.”
Figg ran a hand through the boy’s hair. “That’s the fellow.”
“Remember that,” Dekkar said, standing.
When Keely tried to stand, Figg said, “Don’t take it too fast, sport. Hold still.”
“I’m all right.”
“You can be all right sitting on the bunk. The boat’s moving pretty fast. We should all stay still.” He was looking at Kitra when he said that.
He had come to feel close to her, for some reason. He could tell she was afraid now, and ashamed of herself for being afraid. She must have always considered herself to be the stalwart type; at seventy or so she was young enough to have held onto such illusions. Sooner or later everyone came face-to-face with something too terrifying to endure.
She moved quietly to Figg’s side without the least hesitation or discomfort, laid her head on his thigh, sighed, and watched Keely. Dekkar was standing with Pel at the front of the boat. Zhengzhou, hesitant, moved toward the bunk, maybe needing a bit of comfort herself. Figg nodded to her, and she sat across from them against the wall.
Kitra’s voice was somber. “He said—Dekkar said—everyone’s dead in the south.”
Figg wet his lips. “I heard.”
“How many people is that?”
“Two or three billion. Jharvan is a big continent.” Figg felt a sinking in himself. “If it’s true. For all we know it’s just a rumor.”
The Hilda, on whatever internal schedule governed its behavior, unfolded itself in the galley and prepared food. At Figg’s side Keely sat quietly, holding the cyborg spider in his lap. Beyond the glass slipped the dark river, shadowy trees hanging over the banks in the gray light, slim figures slipping among them. They had come through the night into some kind of day.
Billions of souls in the dark fluttered up like fireflies, or else cascaded upward like the showers of sparks along the burning river, dying to dark after a short flight.
The possibility began to occur to Figg—he was on a boat sailing north from the wreckage of his farm to a war zone, or worse, out of one disaster into another—that he might soon die himself. He had collided with a scale of thing, a catastrophe like something out of fable. A whole world was being destroyed. Or, rather, a whole people was being wiped off the face of the world. One race was being supplanted by another. Somewhere in that process he might vanish, too.
From his feeling that he was responsible for Keely had flowed the rest of his part in this. How had he ever got caught up in anything but his own pleasure? Why had turning three hundred changed him so drastically?
“We’re close,” Keely said, face turned toward the front of the boat. The green film had grown regular, almost symmetrical, to simulate the contours of his old face. The texture was like calloused skin. He touched it again, reverently.
“Close to what?”
“To the place where we have to leave the boat.”
Dekkar was looking back at them, listening. “He’s right.”
“Are we not going to my brother first, then?” Kitra asked.
He watched her for a long time. “He’s here, too. Quite close.”
“He can’t be. His tree’s not in this part of the river system. He’s along an interior canal.”
“No.” Dekkar shook his head. “You’ll see.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve been there—”
“His tree was moved, Kitra. Some time ago.” He spoke with certainty, not a sign of hesitation.
“You can’t move a tree that far.”
“Yes, you can. If y
ou’re Rao.”
That quieted her, at least until it sank in. “What does my brother have to do with Rao?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you know his tree is here.”
He looked at her.
She flushed, angry. “Answer me.”
“No, I won’t. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”
“Dekkar, I swear—” She tried to get to her feet, found herself suddenly too dizzy.
“Save your strength,” he said, turning his back to her. “You’ll need it. I know I’m sure to need mine.”
Figg lay his hand on her shoulder, drew her against him again. He watched her face, and for a moment she watched back. Her confusion made him tender. He touched the back of his hand to her cheek, light and quick. She closed her eyes.
A few moments later breakfast, or something like it, was ready. Outside the riverbank rushed by at such a clip they might have been riding in the flitter instead of a boat.
By now, with Figg’s link down, his newsburst queue no longer received its updates. He was reaching further into the queue, the sorts of items that he rarely attended.
1193 Since the opening of the Anilyn Gate, the population of the Reeks beneath Béyoton has declined so drastically that city officials are speculating on what to do with the open space. Nearly two hundred million citizens who lived in the Reeks have migrated from Senal in the past two years, most of them claiming support from the Common Fund and investing in a place in a colony along the Conveyance. Béyoton is estimated to have lost nearly thirty million inhabitants of the informal city-beneath-the-city population. Other Reeks citizens have migrated to other locales within Home Star or have simply moved upstairs to open shops closed since their owners sold their stock and migrated in the early years of the Conquest. Compiled from bot-search protocols, this item is not an official news broadcast newburst.
1206 Miss Destiny FormiCon was crowned at a recent Speculative Surround Convention in Deep Rahd, an underwater city off the coast of Nedai Protectorate. Destiny’s Divine is a beauty pageant in which middlewams and neuters compete to determine who makes the most convincing example of a gendered phenotype; Miss Destiny was won by a costumed, hormone-riddled middlewam from the capital while Mr. Destiny was a neuter pumped up on steroids and testosterone to resemble any number of vid action heroes. This item was compiled from bot-search protocols along with a notation that these protocols were scheduled to expire on a date within the next twenty days. The expiration date was a sign of Figg’s passing interest in the sudden fashion in male body hair that had swept parts of Senal over the last year. This was an offshoot of constantly changing trends in retrograde fashion.
