The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Lawrence."

  "That was the name. Bitterest when we two miss each other; hardest the world when Boga and I do. Pity Boga, he has no Patroclus, no Guenevere."

  Shimshek smoked a time, and his eyes traveled around the padded interior of the wagon, which was only a wagon, perched on the world-plain, and smoky and deeply shadowed. But there seemed no limits and no walls, as if much of time hinged here.

  "Sometimes," said Yilan slowly, "I live my whole life without seeing the pattern of what I do; sometimes. . . there is no design evident, and Boga and I and you and Gunesh. . . live apart and lost; sometimes in little lives and sometimes in great ones; sometimes I've been a baby that died before a year, only marking time til my soul could be elsewhere. Or resting, perhaps, just resting. Some of my deaths are hard."

  "I'll go out with you this time. I've no fear of it."

  Yilan chuckled and winced, a little twinge of pain in the gut. "Shimshek, you lie; you are afraid."

  "Yes."

  "And losing Gunesh would break your heart and mine; take care of her."

  "Ah, Baba."

  "You're the one who loves, you understand. My dear friend, I do think this time you may outlive me. You'll see a measure of revenge if you wait and watch."

  "What is revenge if it never ends?"

  "Indeed. Indeed, old friend. I'll tell you something I've begun to see. The balance swings. I move men only so far in a lifetime; only so much help to any side. I was Akkadian, Sumerian, Egyptian, Kushite, Greek, Macedonian. . . I brought Persia to birth; defended Greece against it at Thermopylae; built an eastern empire as Alexander; and a western one as Hannibal; checked both as Caesar, and drove north and south; was Chinese and Indian and African. . . side against side. We live by balances; there is no revenge, and there is. Point of view, Shimshek."

  Shimshek only stared.

  "Love Gunesh," Yilan said. "Live. I want you out of here before the dawn; slip her into your camp. When I am dead, there will be a bit of noise. Then sound the horn and ride. Probably there'll be great confusion—some attacking the city, some coming this way; you see the old man's still thinking. It's one of my best stratagems."

  "No, Baba. I'll not leave you here to be killed."

  "Don't be obstinate. You'll only hasten your death. And hers."

  "Shall I tell her. . . what you've told me?"

  "Is it peace to you, to know what I've told you?"

  "No," Shimshek said heavily. "No, Father; no peace— There's no ending, is there?"

  "As to that, I don't know. But from the world's dawn to the world's ending. . . we're the same. Unchangeable."

  "Boga and you are the great ones," Shimshek said, "Isn't it so. . . that she and I are powerless?"

  "Mostly," he said and watched pride vastly hurt. "Only—Shimshek, if it weren't for you—I might be Boga. Think of that. If not for you. . . and for her. Because I love you."

  "Baba," Shimshek murmured, and laid down the pipe and put gentle arms about him, kissed his brow.

  "Go," he said. "Go now, and when you hear the uproar that will follow when I'm dead. . . ride with Gunesh."

  "I will not leave you, Baba. Not to die in your bed."

  "Can you not? Do you grudge me a quiet death? Even Boga has chosen that for me this time, and I am tired, young firebrand; the old man is tired."

  The curtain drew back. Shimshek reached frantically after his sword, but it was Gunesh.

  "How much time must I give you?" she asked.

  "Sit," Yilan said, patting the rug beside him, and she sat down there on her heels. "You have some persuasion in you, woman. Move this young man."

  "To leave you?"

  Yilan nodded grimly, motioned with the bowl of his pipe toward the peripheries of the camp. "How does it look out there?"

  "Like stars," she said. "If the sky could hold so many."

  "Like the old sky," he said. "So many, many more than now. Do you ever dream of such stars, Gunesh? I do. And I tell you that you have to go with this mad young man, and not to lose that baby of yours and his. Can you ride, Gunesh?"

  She nodded, moist-eyed; he had had enough of tears from Shimshek.

  "No nonsense," he said.

  "I have dreamed," she said, "that we've said this before."

  "Indeed," he said. "Indeed. And shall again. Someday Shimshek will tell you."

  "They're true," she said, and shivered violently.

  "Yes," he admitted finally, knowing full well what they she meant. "Yes, Gunesh. The dreams. Perhaps we all three have them."

  Shimshek shut his eyes and turned his face away.

  "Yilan," Gunesh wept.

  "So there'll not be argument. You two have to get out of here. That's the pattern this time. I've ceased to need you."

  "Have you?" Shimshek asked.

  "Not in that way," he admitted. He could never bear to hurt them. And it began to have the flavor of something they had often done, a movement like ritual to which they knew the words; had known them for all the age of the Earth. "Hold me," he said, and opened his arms. It was the only real thing left, the thing they all wanted most of all. They made one embrace, he and she and he, and it was reward of all the pain, more than cities, more than empires—it was very rare that they understood one another so well; Montmorency and Dunstan and Kuwei; Arslan and Kemal; so many, many shapes. They were given nothing to take with them, but the memory, and the love and the knowledge—that the pattern went on.

  "I love you," he told them. "The night is half done and there's nothing more for you to do. I'll see you again. Can you doubt it?"

  The smoke of the pyres had died to a steady ascending plume, which the wind whipped away. A great number of the people of the City of Heaven gathered in the darkened square to mourn; white bones showed in that pathetic tangle, in the embers of that fire into which much of the wealth of the city had been cast, to keep the hands of barbarians from it.

  It was much of the past which died, more bitter loss than the lives. It was the city's beauty which had died.

  And some prayed and some were drunken, anticipating death.

  And some sought their own places, and their familiar homes.

  And lovers touched, mute. There were no words for what was happening, though it had been happening since the first army raided the first straw village. There were no words because it was happening to them, and it was tomorrow, and they were numb in that part of the mind which should understand their situation; and all too quick in that part of the heart which felt it.

  They touched, Kan Te and Tao Hua, and touches became caresses; then caresses became infinitely pleasurable, a means to deny death existed. They were not wed—it was not lawful—but there was no time left for weddings. The ashes of the dead settled on their roof and drifted in the open window to settle on their bed.

  They loved; and spent themselves, and slept with tears on their lashes, the exhausted sleep of lovers who had no tomorrow.

  "No," said Gunesh, and touched Yilan's face in that secret, loving way. There were, for them, too many tomorrows. "This time. . . we stay. This time—after all the world's ages—we might make the difference. We might, mightn't we? If we've been trapped before, can't we fight, this time?"

  A strange warmth pricked Yilan's cold heart. He turned, painful as it was, and cupped Gunesh's fair face between his scarred hands. "I have thought. . . perhaps. . . someday— you might have some part to play."

  "Then let us," exlcaimed Lancelot/Shimshek/Antony. "O Yilan, let us."

  He thought. "We proceed slowly, my friends. O so slowly; perhaps the old pattern is for changing; perhaps it does resolve itself, in the long ages. I grow wiser; and Boga. . . perhaps wiser too. It may be, someday, that you can change what is. Perhaps we've gained more than an empire in that, my friends; and maybe you are the ones. . . someday. But not this time. Not this time, I think; it's too late; we've lost too much."

  "Do we know that?"

  He looked at Shimshek, smiled with a sudden shedding of the fe
ars which had made him old. Laughed, as he had laughed when he was young, and the world was, and they knew nothing of what would be. "No. No. Hai, my friends, my dear friends, there is something left we don't know."

  "Tell me what we shall do," said Shimshek. "Tell me, Yilan, and I'll do it."

  "Remember," he said. "Remember! We'll fight, my old friends', we'll fight each time. We'll change the pattern on him; and you'll be by me; and you'll. . . someday. . . tip the scales. I believe that. O my friends, I do believe it."

  "I shall fight now," said Gunesh, drawing her small dagger.

  "We are all drunk with the smoke," Yilan laughed. "We dream of old heroes and old wars. But the dreams are true. And we are those heroes."

  He strove to rise, to walk, the last time, and Shimshek put his sword into his hand. Together they helped him down the steps, and Gunesh had gotten herself his second sword. Old Horse was standing there, with Shimshek's beast. Poor Horse, no one had attended him. And some of Shimshek's guard were there. . . and some of Boga's. "Kill them!" Shimshek commanded, and quick as sword could clear sheath the battle was joined: no honor there—Boga's men fell in their blood, and all about them men boiled from wagons clutching swords. "Get me up," Yilan raged; and Shimshek's guards gave them horses. Horse was left, to die of age.

  He hit the saddle, winced, tautened his grip on the sword. "A curse on Boga," he shouted. "Death to Boga! Traitor!"

  The cry spread, breaking the peace of the night, and the whole camp broke up into chaos, wagons pouring out men and men screaming for horses.

  And Shimshek rode like a man demented, Yilan and Gunesh riding behind him, the night muddled before them, dark shapes of men and horses plunging this way and that, the tide of shouts and rumors sweeping the plain for miles. Fires were doused like all the stars of heaven going out, and men rushed inward to fight they knew not what night attack.

  Straight past Boga's lynx standard they rode, Shimshek in his fury cutting down the standard-guard. Leaning from the saddle, he seized up the banner and bore it like a lance, for the heart of Boga's men who had rallied to defense.

  He tore through them. There was slaughter done; and Gunesh swept through, wielding an unaccustomed sword on the heads of any in her way; Yilan last. . . he struck with feeble fury, with longing, with a rage of ages frustrated.

  "Traitor!" he screamed.

  And a spear, swifter than poison, found his belly. He saw Boga who had hurled it, saw Shimshek's blade arc down to kill Boga as he had killed him a thousand thousand times; saw Gunesh fall.

  "My friends," he mourned, and tears blinded his eyes before death did.

  They butchered him; but he knew nothing of that.

  They had done it at Pompey's statue, and at Thermopylae, and a thousand times before.

  Shimshek died, and Gunesh died beneath her horse, a son within her.

  The fighting spread among the great horde; horde split from horde; bodies littered the plain. Some, leaderless, drew away in confusion. Boga's was one such tribe; and Yilan's; and Shimshek's. And a hundred others followed. Those left fought for Supremacy, killing and killing, until the sun showed them what they had done.

  The sun rose on a calm day, in the strange sanity of this waiting. The City of Heaven waited, madness purged, men and women standing on the walls, holding the spears they had gathered from the ground outside, with the doors closed fast and barred, with their courage regathered in their hearts. No more flowers, no more ribbons; they were there to defend their home, a toughened, determined crew.

  But the dust diminished; it went toward the west and diminished. When scouts went out they saw at a great distance the carrion birds circling and the slaughtered remnant of a great host, and the trampled trail of a retreat.

  They found the broken banner of Yilan the conqueror, but his body they never found; they brought the banner back in triumph, and the spirit of the City swelled with pride, for they were great, and suspected it, in a fiercer, warlike spirit.

  "We have turned them," said Kan Te, when the news came, clutching his spear the tighter. "We shall tell the story," said Tao Hua. "We shall never forget this day."

  They walked with a different, deadlier step, a people conscious of death, and of the land about them, ambitious for revenge.

  A new, fell spirit had gotten through the gates, clinging with the stink of the smoke.

  "We shall wed properly," Kan Te said. "I don't think it matters; there must have been many who did what we did. There is no shame, but we shall wed properly."

  "I am not ashamed," she said.

  "Nor am I," he said. He kissed her, there atop the walls, in the sight of folk who had ceased to be shocked by anything, and she kissed him. They walked away together, and she set her hand to her belly, struck with a recollection of pain and pleasure and a lingering warmth. . . she could have become pregnant, she realized. She had not thought of that before, had not thought in terms of living long enough, and life was good. The warmth was strange, as if some vitality had gotten into her, some strange force of desire and will.

  As if some stranger had come to dwell there, born of the death and the shaking of their world.

  He had.

  2004

  I was happy when my editor wanted another Sunfall story for this volume, and the request gave me the chance to do a city I particularly love, which I hadn't done in the first volume. So Venice now joins the company—a city of unique history and constantly shifting perspectives, a city of romance and a particular stubborn courage in its long dealings with the sea. Maybe that's why it so attracts me, this city at war between sea and land, a city that has found a unique way to be modern, and still to remain so perfectly ancient.

  CJC

  MASKS

  (Venice)

  Venezia of the canals, queen of the Adriatic, Venezia: a city built and rebuilt, while the sun starts to fail and the Earth grows strange. She was never meant to be an eternal city—only a refuge from danger.

  She was never planned to become one of the last great cities on Earth, but here she sits, behind her immense sea gates. The great tides of this latter age rush in and out while, outside the city lagoon, the heatborn Adriatic storms howl and hammer the ancient metal, cleverly-worked tidal gates a thousand times renewed and enlarged. The sea is the city's passionate admirer, a ruinous suitor who brings her gifts of ships and wealth when he smiles, and threatens to overwhelm her when his temper darkens.

  While her gates hold, the sea observes his gentlemanly limits. So long as her gates hold, he will bring her his gifts as he always has, and he will bide his time, having had, as all her people know, no change of heart or character at all.

  Timbers bear the city up, the oldest pilings long decayed into quaking ooze, so that her newest pilings float, rather than rest, in the accumulated detritus of ages. The natives say there exist places where, if an unfortunate fool, well-weighted, should fall into the canal, he would sink for a year before he reached bottom, down amid bronze age pots and Roman armor of the Iron Age. So they say. Venezia loves her legends.

  Venezia loves two things more than her legends: her unique liberty and her internal peace.

  She has cherished her liberty from oldest times. While other cities bled under dukes and potentates, when other cities burned their dissenters and dressed all in black and gray, their citizens pretending deep, grim piety to survive, Venezia elected doges, civil leaders, who made humane laws.

  Her ancient liberty gives her a joyous spirit. She prefaces her solemn days of sacrifice with days of carnevale, for masques and dream and glittering splendor, a furious few days, a luscious farewell to pleasures, and that only for a season. She is Venezia, la Repubblica Serenissima, and her pleasures like her lovers, will surely come again.

  At this wildest time of year, at the carnevale, they all wear masks. They trade them about with no regard to class. They are all princes, all thieves, all harlequins, all pulcinellas behind the masks, since Venezia knows this truth about her citizens, that one man, a
cobbler, is very like the clerk, and either one might be mistaken for their lord. A courtesan can become a lady for a night, and a virgin again by daybreak. If a citizen wearies of one mask, why, change the mask again. Carnevale encourages it. God has blessed it. Has He not been patient with carnevale forever? And does not Venezia endure?

  Beyond her slender link to the dry land, out in the higher, rolling hills, people put their faith in lords again, strong warlords, wielders of dependable power—lords, so they hope, that may make them safe. But they pay a price for this. One might say that in Venezia people only wear their masks for the season. But in the cities to the west, people wear them forever, the dukes, the laborers, the artisans all doomed to their roles for life.

  They lack humor and romance, those outsiders, Venetians say; but Venezia possesses both. Even if the powers of the world come in with heavy boots and rules as tyrants for a season—why, as philosophically and easily as they observe their annual interval of sacrifice, Venetians accept that things might be grim for the while, but Venetians always have their will, and their ways, interlopers and sojourners be damned, Venezia is confident she will choose her doge again. She will hold her masques again and build back her realm of glittering glass, her power like the glassworkers' art, like a bubble of air, of glowing heat. Sometimes it fails, but most times it hardens and shines like the sun.

  Venezia is mercantile, more than regal, more glass than gems. Her days rest, like her foundations, on quaking ground, her eternal ideals of equality, and freedom. Everything is for sale in her markets. And nothing she sells is irreplaceable. When outsiders come to rule her, Venezia changes them, or, if they refuse, allows them a space to parade and make a show. When the show ceases to amuse—then Venezia can change her masks, oh, so quickly, and the interloper finds nothing quite as it had seemed.

  Venezia is no friendlier to immigrants than to conquerors, alas: she is so tiny a city compared to, say, Milano, or ancient Ravenna, or Verona, She exists on a set of isles. She can scarcely expand her boundaries, or build up, or outward. She is what she is and has been and will be. Those families who live here have lived here forever. Those who come here come on family connections, or on the charity of residents, or find no place to lodge. There is simply no room.