The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  To be sure, when the decades slipped by and her flesh continued young—

  Noise thrust into the marsh, shouts, whinnies, drumbeats. She scuttered to look. The Tatars had trussed up their loot and marshalled their ranks. They were departing. She saw no captives, but guessed they were bound astride pack horses with the rest of the baggage. Smoke still blew thinly : out of the blackened, broken walls of Pereyaslavl.

  The Tatars were headed northeasterly, away from the Trubezh, toward the Dniepr and Kiyiv. The great city was a day’s march in that direction, less on horseback.

  O Christ, have mercy, were they off to take Kiyiv?

  No, they were too few.

  But others must be raging elsewhere across the Russian land. Their demon king must have a plan. They could join together, resharpen swords blunted by butchery, and go on as a conquering horde.

  In the house of God I sought eternity, passed through Varvara. Here I have seen that it also has an end.

  I too?

  Yes, I can die, if only by steel or fire or famine or flood; therefore someday I shall die. Already, to those among whom I was ageless, those that live, I am a ghost, or less than a ghost.

  First the nuns, later the monks and secular priests, finally the layfolk began to marvel at Sister Varvara. After some fifty years, peasants were appealing to her for help in their woes and pilgrims arriving from places quite far. As she had feared from the outset, there was no choice but to tell her confessor the truth about her past. With her reluctant leave, he informed Bishop Simeon. The latter planned to inform the Metropolitan. If they did not have an actual saint in the cloister of the Virgin, and Sister Varvara said she could not possibly be one, they had a miracle.

  How was she to live with that?

  She would never have to. The bishop, the priests, the believers were dead or fled. The annals of the cloister were burned. Anything elsewhere was likewise destroyed, or soon would be, or was doomed to molder away forgotten now when people had so much death to think about. A memory of her might linger in a few minds, but seldom find utterance, and it would die with them.

  Had the Tatars come as God’s denial, His decision that she was unworthy—or as His release from a burden no child of Adam should bear—or was she, defiled and torn, nonetheless so full of worldly pride that she dared imagine she mattered?

  She clung to the hummock. Earth and sun, moon and stars, wind and rain and human love, she could understand the old gods better than she understood Christ. But they were forsaken by man, remembered only in dances and feasts, fireside tales and fireside spirits; they were ghosts.

  Yet lightning, thunder, and vengeance forever walked the skies above Russia, be they of Perun or of St. Yuri the dragonslayer. Varvara drank strength from the soil as a babe drinks milk. When the Tatars were out of sight, she sprang to her feet, shook her fist after them, and shouted, “We will abide! We will outlast you, and in the end we will crush you and take back what is ours!”

  Calmer, then, she removed her clothes, washed them in the river, spread them on a slope to dry. Meanwhile she cleansed herself again and gathered more wild food. Next morning she sought the ruins.

  Ash, charred timber, snags of brick and stone lay silent under heaven. A pair of churches were left, foul with soot. Inside them sprawled corpses. The slain outside were many more, and in worse condition. Carrion birds quarreled over them, flying off with a blast of wingbeats and shrieks whenever she approached. There was nothing she could do but offer a prayer.

  Searching about, she found clothes, shoes, an undamaged knife, and such-like needs. Taking each, she smiled and whispered, “Thank you” to its owner’s ghost. Her journey would be hard and dangerous at best. She did not mean it to end until she had reached the kind of new home she wanted—whatever that was.

  In the dawn that followed, before setting forth, she told the sky: “Remember my name. I am Varvara no more. I am again Svoboda.” Freedom.

  X. In the Hills

  1

  Where mountains began their long climb toward Tibet, a village nestled. On three sides its dell lifted steeply, making horizons high and close. A stream from the west rushed through upper woods of cypress and dwarf oak, gleamed as a waterfall, passed among the buildings, and lost itself in bamboo and ruggedness eastward. The people cultivated wheat, soybeans, vegetables, melons, some fruit trees on the floor of the vale and on small terraces above. They kept pigs, chickens, and a fishpond. This, their score or so of turf-roofed earthen houses, and they themselves had been there so long that sun, rain, snow, wind, and time had made them as much a part of the land as the pheasant, the panda, or the wildflowers in spring.

  On the east the view opened, a wrinklescape manifoldly green and tawny with forest, to right and left a sight of snowpeaks afloat in heaven. Through it wound a road, scarcely more than a track, the village its terminus. Traffic was sparse. Several times a year, men undertook a journey of days, to market in a little town and home again. There they also paid taxes in kind. Thus the governor very seldom thought to send a man to them. When he did, the inspector only stayed overnight, inquired of the elders how things were going, received ritual answers, and departed eagerly. The place had a somewhat uncanny reputation.

  That was in the eyes of orthodox outsiders. To others it was holy. Because of this awe, whether vague or devout, as well as its loneliness, war and banditry had passed the village by. It followed its own ways, enduring no more than die ordinary sorrows and calamities of life. Once in a while a pilgrim overcame the obstacles—distance, hardship, danger—to visit it. In the course of generations, a few among those had remained. The village took, them into its peace. Thus things were. Thus had they always been. Their beginnings were unknown save to myth and the Master.

  Great, therefore, was the excitement when a herdboy came running and shrilled that a traveler was on the way, “Shame, bad, that you left your ox unattended,” chided his grandfather, but gently. The boy explained that he had first tethered the beast; and, after all, no tiger arrived. He was forgiven. Meanwhile folk bustled and shouted about. Presently a disciple struck the gong in the shrine. A metal voice toned forth, rang off the hillsides, mingled with shush of waterfall and murmur of wind.

  Autumn comes early in the high hills. Woodlands were dappled brown and yellow, grass was turning sere, fallen leaves crunched underfoot near puddles left by last night’s rain. Overhead the sky arched unutterably blue, empty of all but wings. Bird cries drifted faint through air flowing down the mountainside. Smoke from hearthfires sharpened its chill.

  As the stranger trudged up the last stretch of road, the gathered villagers saw with astonishment that this was a woman. Threadbare and oft mended, her gown of coarse cotton had faded to gray. Her boots were equally near the end of their service, and use had worn smooth the staff that swung in her right hand. From her left shoulder hung a rolled-up blanket, just as wayworn, which held a wooden bowl and perhaps one or two other things.

  Yet she was no beggar granny. Her body was straight and slim, her stride firm and limber. Where a scarf fluttered loose, one could see hair like a crow’s wing, hacked off just below the earlobes; and her face, though weathered, drawn close over the bones, was unlined. Never had such a face appeared in these parts. She did not even seem of quite the same breed as the lowlanders from whose country she fared.

  Elder Tsong trod forward. For lack of a better thought, he greeted her according to the ancient rite, despite every newcomer hitherto having been male. “In the name of the Master and the people, I bid you welcome to our Morning Dew Village. May you walk in the Tao, in peace, and the gods and spirits walk with you. May the hour of your advent prove lucky. Enter as a guest, depart as a friend.”

  “This humble person thanks you, honorable sir,” she replied. Her accent was like none that anybody had heard before, but that was no surprise. “I come in search of ... enlightenment.” The word shook. Fervent must her hope be.

  Tsong turned and bowed toward the shrine and the Master’s
house behind it. “Here is the home of the Way,” he said. Some persons smiled smugly. Their home.

  “May we know your name, that it be borne to the Master?” Tsong asked.

  She hesitated, then: “I call myself Li, honorable sir.”

  He nodded. The wind ruffled his thin white beard. “If you have chosen that, you have likely chosen well.” In her pronunciation, it could mean the measure of distance. Ignoring whispers, mutters, and stirrings among the folk, he forbore to inquire further. “Come. You shall take refreshment and stay with me.”

  “Your ... leader—”

  “In due course, young miss, in due course. Pray come.”

  Her features settled into an aspect no one could fathom, something between resignation and an ageless determination. “Again, my humble thanks,” she said, and accompanied him.

  The villagers moved aside. Several uttered words of goodwill. Beneath a natural curiosity, they were as alike in their mildness—the very children were—as in their padded garments and work-hardened hands. Alike, too, were many faces, broad and rather fiat-nosed above sturdy frames. After Tsong, his family, and Li disappeared, they chatted for a while, then piecemeal went back to their cookfires, handmills, looms, tools, animals, all that kept them alive as it had kept their ancestors alive from time out of mind.

  Tseng’s oldest son, with wife and offspring, lived with him. They stayed in the background, except for serving tea and food. The house was larger, than most, four rooms inside rammed-earth walls, darksome but comfortably warm. While homes were poorly and rudely furnished, there was no real want; rather, contentment and cheerfulness prevailed. Tsong and Li sat on mats at a low table and enjoyed broth flavored with ruddy peppercorns, fragrant amidst the savors of other foodstuffs hung under the roof.

  “You shall wash and rest before we meet with my fellow elders,” he promised.

  Her spoon trembled. “Please,” she blurted, “when may I see the teacher? I have come, oh, a long and weary way.”

  Tsong frowned. “I understand your desire. But we really know nothing about you, ah, Miss Li.”

  Her lashes lowered. “Forgive me. I think what I have to tell is for his ears alone. And I think—I, I pray he will want to hear me soon. Soon!”

  “We must not be overhasty. That would be irreverent, and maybe unlucky. What do you know about him?”

  “Hardly more than rumors, I confess. The story—no, different stories in different places as I wandered. At first they sounded like folk tales. A holy man afar in the west, so holy that death dares not touch him— Only as I came nearer did anyone tell me that this is his dwelling ground. Few would say that much. They seemed afraid to speak, although ... I never heard ill of him.”

  “No ill is there to hear,” said Tsong, softened by her earnestness. “You must have a great soul, that you ventured the pilgrimage. Quite alone, too, a youthful woman. Surely your stars are strong, that you took no harm. That bodes well.”

  Dim of eye and in smoky dusk, he failed to see how she winced. “Nevertheless our wizard must read the bones,” he continued thoughtfully, “and we must offer to the ancestors and spirits, yes, hold a purification; for you are a woman.”

  “What has the holy man to fear, if time itself obeys him?” she cried.

  His tone calmed her somewhat: “Nothing, I daresay. And certainly he will protect us, his beloved people, as he always has. What do you wish to hear about him?”

  “Everything, everything,” she whispered.

  Tsong smiled. His few stumps of teeth glistened in what light passed through a tiny window. “That would take years,” he said. “He has been with us for centuries, if not longer.”

  Again she tautened. “When did he come?”

  Tsong sipped his tea. “Who knows? He has books, he can read and write, but the rest of us cannot. We tally the months, but not the years. Why should we? Under his good sway, lifespans are alike, as happy as the stars and the spirits may grant. The outside world troubles us never. Wars, famines, pestilences, those are gnat-buzz borne in from the market town, which itself hears little. I could not tell you who reigns in Nanking these days, nor do I care.”

  “The Ming drove out the foreign Yuan some two hundred years ago, and the Imperial seat is Peking.”

  “Ah, learned, are you?” the old man chuckled. “Yes, our forebears did hear about invaders from the north, and we know they are now gone. However, the Tibetans are much closer, and they have not attacked these parts for generations, nor ever our village. Thanks be to the Master.”

  “He is your true king, then?”

  “No, no.” The bald head shook. “To rule over us would be beneath his dignity. He counsels the elders when we ask, and of course we heed. He instructs us, during our childhoods and throughout our lives, in the Way; and of course we gladly follow it as well as we are able. When someone falls from it, the chastisement he orders is gentle—though quite enough, since real evildoing means expulsion, exile, homelessness for life and ever afterward.”

  Tsong shuddered slightly before going on: “He receives pilgrims. From among them and from among our own youths who wish it, he accepts a few disciples at a time. They serve his worldly needs, listen to his wisdom, strive to attain a small part of his holiness. Not that this keeps them from eventually having households of their own; and often the Master honors a family, any family in the village, with his presence or his blood.”

  “His blood?”

  Li flushed when Tsong answered, “You have much to learn, young miss. Male Yang and female Yin must join for the health of the body, the soul, and the world. I am myself a grandson of the Master. Two daughters of mine have borne him children. One was already married, but her husband kept from her until they were sure it would indeed be a child of Tu Shan that blessed their home. The second, who is lame in one leg, suddenly needed only a bedspread for her dowry. Thus is the Way,”

  “I see.” He could barely hear her. She had gone pale.

  “If you cannot accept this,” he said kindly, “you may still meet him and receive his blessing before you leave. He forces no one.”

  She gripped the spoon in her fist as if its handle were a post to which she clung lest she be whirled off the earth. “No, I will surely do his will,” stumbled from her throat, “I who have been seeking over all these lives, all these years.”

  2

  He could have been a peasant man of the village—but then, every one of them was closely or distantly descended from him—with the same strong frame clad in the same thick coat and trousers, the same grime and calluses on feet that indoors were bare. His beard hung thin, youthfully black, his hair was drawn into a topknot. The house he inhabited with his disciples was as big as any, but no bigger, also of plain earth above a clay floor. The room to which one of the young men admitted her before bowing and leaving was scarcely better furnished. There was a bedstead, wide enough for him and whatever woman might attend him; straw mats, stools, table, a calligraphic scroll, gone brown-spotted and flyspecked, on the wall above a stone altar; a wooden chest for clothing, a smaller brass one that doubtless held books; a few bowls, cups, cloths, and other everyday things. The window was shuttered against a blustery wind. A single lampflame did little to relieve murkiness. Coming in from outdoors, Li was first aware of the smell. It was not unpleasant, but it was heavy, blent of old smoke and grease, manure tracked in on shoes, humanity, centuries.

  Seated, he lifted a hand in benison. “Welcome,” he said in die hill dialect. “May the spirits guide you along the Way.” His gaze was shrewd. “Do you wish to make offering?”

  She bowed low. “I am a poor wanderer, Master.”

  He smiled. “So they have told me. Fear not. Most who come here believe gifts will win them the favor of the gods. Well, if it helps uplift their souls, they are right. But the seeking soul itself is the only real sacrifice. Be seated, Lady JLi, and let us come to know each other.”

  As the elders had instructed her, she knelt on the mat near his feet. His look s
earched her. “You do that otherwise than any woman I have seen before,” he murmured, “and you talk differently, too.”

  “I am but newly in these parts, Master.”

  “I mean that you do not talk like a lowlander who has picked up some of the highland form of speech.”

  “I thought I had learned more than one Chinese tongue well, as long as I have been in the Middle Kingdom,” broke from her.

  “I’ve been widely about, myself.” He shifted to the idiom of Shansi or Honan, though it was not quite what she remembered from the wealthy, populous northeastern provinces and he used it rustily. “Will you be more at ease talking this?”

  “I learned it first, Master.”

  “It’s been long since I— But where are you from, then?”

  She raised her face toward his. Her heart thuttered. With an effort like reining in a wild horse, she kept her voice level. “Master, I was born across the sea, in the country of Nippon.”.

  His eyes widened. “You have come far in your search for salvation.”

  “Far and long, Master.” She drew breath. Her mouth had gone dry. “I was born four hundred years ago.”

  “What?” He leaped to his feet.

  She rose too. “It is true, it is true,” she said desperately. “How could I dare lie to you? The enlightenment I seek, have sought, oh, that was to find someone like myself, who never grows old—”

  She could hold back the tears no more. He laid his arms around her. She clung close and felt how he also trembled.

  After a time they drew apart and, for another while, stared at one another. The wind boomed outside.

  A strange calm had fallen on her. She blinked her lashes clear and told him, “You have only my word for this, of course. I learned quite early to be nobody that anybody was ... much concerned about or would ... especially remember.”