Watson, Ian - Black Current 03

by The Book Of Being (v1. 1)

  "Only when you had a hangover!"

  "But I have me, um, dignity to think about." And I winked full in her big red burly face, loving the sight of it.

  "You may depart," I told Lana; who did.

  "Quite the princess!" Peli declared.

  "You mean priestess. You don't mind, do you, Peli?"

  "What, mind you being a priestess?"

  "No, you noddle. Mind being dragged all the way here. Being hauled off the river. I need friends, Peli."

  She had sobered. "I guessed as much. What for?" she whispered.

  "I'm hemmed in. I'm smothered with attention. Watched. Just yet I don't know what's best to do—"

  "But when you do, I'll be here to help." Peli looked round my quarters, noting the child-size bed, the profusion of flockity rugs to cushion any falls, the doors to the river verandah with their great bolts set out of reach, my bookcase crammed with Ajelobo romances, my antique ivorybone scritoire with a pile of blank paper and a pot of ink in it. . . .

  "Wondering where I keep my toys?"

  She grinned. "Wondering where you keep the booze."

  "Aha." I headed for the brass bell mounted over my bed and clanged it. Lana reappeared speedily. "What'll it be, then?" I asked Peli.

  "A drop of ginger spirit wouldn't come amiss."

  "A bottle of," I told Lana. "Plus a spiced ale for myself."

  "A small one?"

  "But of course."

  Lana nodded, and soon returned with the drinks on a copper tray. Peli and I settled to talk the rest of the afternoon away; and the evening too till dinner time.

  Peli had of course noted the pile of paper waiting to be inked. "Another book?" she enquired eventually. I thought it had taken her rather a long while to ask. "Mmm. This time I think it would be wise to make two copies."

  "Why's that?"

  "One to smuggle out. Somehow or other."

  "Oh, the guard frisked me on the way in—looking for hidden hatchets or bludgeons, I thought. Do you mean it's the same when you leave? Hey, I do get out, don't I? I mean, I'm allowed into town?"

  "You're allowed. No problem. But they'll be leery of what you might take out with you. Nobody could slip a whole wad of paper past the guard, and page by page'll take ages. Still, a page at a time is how the copy'll have to be made if prying eyes aren't to see."

  "Sounds difficult." Peli glanced at the verandah door.

  "They keep an eye on the water. No rowboat could sneak up."

  "Sounds downright impossible."

  "Oh, come off it. Is this Peli talking? There's bound to be a way. But the first stage is to get the copy made—whilst I'm busy writing the damn book."

  She looked unaccountably troubled. "Is this new book of yours really so important?"

  "Oh, merely to untold millions of people on lots of other worlds, whose brains the Godmind means to fry. Just that important."

  "Hmm. Important enough."

  "Right now we're only intent on saving ourselves. No one but me has any concept of other worlds."

  "Yes I know that, but do you honestly think a book could alter anything? That's what I wonder." Peli poured herself more ginger spirit, a bit urgently. Myself, I'd long since quaffed my spiced ale. Any more booze at the moment would send a little girl to sleep; though with dinner to soak it up I might manage another small ale later. "I mean, for starters there's the whole problem of how to get our own men into the /Ta-store! Not to mention that mob on the west bank. Aren't you being too ambitious. I honestly don't see what any of us could do for a hundred other worlds." (That was two "honestly'^ in the span of a minute. So what was Peli being
  "Neither do I! Not yet. But you surely aren't saying you don't even want to try to help save hundreds of millions of people? I don't know how—but somehow! For a start, by making everyone aware."

  Peli looked downright miserable. "Yaleen, what I'm saying . . . as regards copying your book ... is that I just don't write too well. Or read, for that matter. In fact, I just don’t. Read and write. Can't," she mumbled.

  "Oh grief." I didn't know what to say. I hadn't for one moment suspected. And I don't suppose that anybody else ever had; for I could see how much this confession cost her. "Oh Peli, I'm sorry."

  "I go cross-eyed when I see words written down. The letters jump around and do dances." She wouldn't meet my eyes.

  "And you from Aladalia, Peli."

  "Where everyone is so brilliant! Don't I know it? That's why I became a riverwoman. But at least, if I can't read, I can sing,"

  I had to smother a chuckle. "Of course you can."

  "But I'm still ruddy useless to you. It was a waste of time asking me here."

  "No! Don't say so! I haven't been able to confide in anyone till now. I need you, Peli."

  "Can't copy your book, though."

  No, and I couldn't copy it either. I already had enough other duties on my plate. Once I actually started writing, my spare time would be gobbled up.

  "We'll think of something. You and I," I assured her. "Don't fret; I really do need you here."

  Didn't I just! It seemed to me a fair bet that the guild wouldn't publish this next book uncensored. They might be selective, or they might simply sit on the book. I could be wrong, but I wasn't going to risk it. So: how to smuggle a copy out, supposing one could be made?

  How could it reach a printing press? And how could copies get distributed—with the guild in charge of all cargoes? Peli was going to have to be a smuggler, and a courier, and more. Ah yes: I would pretend to quarrel with Peli. I would send her away with a flea in her ear, and my book in her duffle bag. Somehow.

  Peli brightened. She drained her glass and refilled it with the last from the bottle. "Let's sing a song for old times' sake, eh?"

  "Why not?" said I. So we carolled our way through till it was time for dinner, which luckily for the ears of anyone musical in the neighbourhood wasn't too long a-coming.

  Dinner was served in Mum's and Dad's suite, and consisted of pig's kidney and tomato kebabs on a bed of saffron rice; all of which no doubt had been hot enough when it set out from the cafe. Peli switched to ale, and I got my hands on a second small mug too.

  I could see that Dad took to Peli, though the booze made her distinctly brash and chortly—I guess she was rebuilding her selfesteem after the confession of illiteracy. Oh what, I wondered, would Dad—who could read a whole page pf spidery writing and crabbed numbers in two flicks of a lamb's tail—have thought of that?

  Oddly enough, I didn't think he would have minded. Mum, on the other hand, merely tolerated Peli. Mum put up with her.

  It was only during dessert (of sorbet blancmange) that I realised that Peli couldn't possibly have read The Book of the River. She surely wouldn't have asked any riversister to read it aloud to her! This meant there must be great gaps in her knowledge of my adventures, ones which she hadn't enquired into while we were chewing the fat earlier on; so as not to betray herself. I'd mainly been bringing her up to date on what had happened since Edrick murdered me.

  I determined to puzzle out what these gaps must be and try to plug them as diplomatically as possible during the course of the next few weeks.

  The very next day, in between my stints in the throne room, I began to write The Book of the Stars.

  It wasn't easy at first. I admit to a few false starts. For here was I, writing about how Tam suddenly hove into sight in Aladalia whilst I was busy writing The Book of the River; and lo, Tam was about to sail into view once again, this time ex Aladalia and at my own behest! So events seemed curiously overlaid, as if I were suffering from double vision. Also, I was writing about happenings which seemed fairly remote to me, who had spent two 'extra' years in between on Earth and its Moon; but to Tam and Peli and everyone else these same happenings were much more recent. I'd looped back through time; they hadn't.

  Soon I was quite intoxicated with my reconstruction of the past. It came as something of a shock when Chanoose announced one day, "Your Tam's d
ue tomorrow noon, aboard the Merry Mandolin."

  Peli, I hasten to add, had been allowed to turn up at the temple without prior advertisement. So no doubt Chanoose said this to get in my good books. Literally! Plain to see that I'd begun writing something. Chanoose and Donnah were well aware that I intended to; so if I had tried to conceal what I was up to, I'm sure this would have roused suspicions. (The copy was what I intended to conceal; howsoever it got done.) Consequently I tackled the job in a spirit of brazen privacy. The privacy component was that I kept my finished copy locked up safely in my scritoire, and made no bones about not letting people kibitz on my work in progress. The brazen part was that I tore up numerous sheets of spoiled paper, cursing roundly in my kiddy voice. This display of artistic temperament deterred enquiries, but more importantly I noted how all such tom scraps disappeared from the straw trash bucket with an efficiency which I ascribed not so much to impassioned tidiness on the part of Lana and company, as to a desire to oversee all of my abortive scribblings. Once I got into my stride—and was in fact writing smoothly—I catered to this appetite by scrawling a few extra irrelevant lines especially to tear up.

  The basket squatted beside my scritoire like a big hairy ear hoping to eavesdrop; but I wasn't worried that eyes would pry into the scritoire itself whilst I was otherwise engaged being priestess. Peli mightn't be able to write but she could certainly perform other neat marvels with her fingers. In town she had purchased a complicated lock, cunningly crafted in Guineamoy. This, she substituted skilfully for the lock in the scritoire lid as supplied, to which I assumed Donnah would have kept a spare key. I always wore the new key round my neck.

  If Chanoose was hoping to ingratiate herself, that was her mistake. Forewarned, I insisted on going to meet Tam when he docked the next day. And why not, indeed? I was sick of sitting on my backside in the temple. Sitting at my scritoire. (I'd found that I genuinely had to turf Peli out while I was composing my narrative, by the way, so maybe my temperaments weren't all pretence.) Sitting on my throne. Sitting at the dinner table. And occasionally sitting out on the verandah, either playing cards with Peli and Dad, or else with my nose in a romance; before tossing it aside—the romance, that is!—to get on writing my own romance. I had to get out!

  Halfway through the next morning's audience, I rose and quit; went down to my quarters to pace the verandah.

  Presently a brig schooner drifted into view, angling in towards the shore. At that distance I couldn't quite read the words painted on the side, but a flag hung over the stem from the ensign staff with a design stitched on it which was either a semitone sign or else the outline of a mandolin. I ran indoors and clanged my bell.

  Donnah had decreed that I should be escorted through the streets to the docks with all due dignity; namely, perched shoulder-high in a padded chair strapped to poles. So much did my litter rock and bob and undulate upon that journey that for a while I, who had never been water-sick but once—aboard the Sally Argent, and then not because of waves—feared that I might turn up at the quayside green and puking. However, I gritted my teeth and even managed to grin and wave my free hand to passers-by who stopped to applaud and blow kisses and fall in behind us; with my other hand I had to clutch the chair-arm.

  Still, at least by this method we proceeded apace. Once we were within sight of the quay, with the Merry Mandolin yet to heave its mooring ropes ashore, I cried, "Set me down! I'll walk from here!" And so I did, with my guards cordoning me from the wake of townsfolk.

  When Tam appeared at the head of the gangplank—a huge bag in each hand—he just stood there for upward of a minute blocking the way. I was waiting at the bottom, with Donnah and her gang. Behind, a fair throng of spectators loomed. Yet Tam didn't seem to notice any of us. He was only seeing—well, he told me this subsequently when we were walking back to the temple together; with his bags riding in my chair rather than me, to Donnah's chagrin—he was only seeing that gangplank which led from water on to land. He was seeing the fact that whilst he stayed aboard the Merry Mandolin, he could still sail anywhere—even all the way back home to Aladalia. But once he crossed that bridge, he would be marooned ashore. Tam was sure he had left something in his cabin; and indeed he had. It wasn't anything tangible, though. What he had left was the way back home. That was why he hesitated for so long.

  He descended. We shook hands—quaintly, his big lumpy hand making mine disappear. I argued with Donnah a bit. The guards hoisted his bags; we set off.

  I soon heard his confession. "But it's so wonderful to be here with you!" he insisted. He was stooping over me from what now seemed to me a hugely gangly height. "That you should have asked for me out of everyone—well, well!" His voice sank softly so that only I should hear. "I have the fleuradieu you sent me, pressed and dried in my luggage—and I have a surprise as well. A present. I never thought I'd actually deliver it. I hoped you might come across its like in some far town one day, and realize that it was for you."

  "That sounds delightfully mysterious."

  "The mystery is you, Yaleen."

  He seemed genuinely happy when he said these things. I decided that this was because he had at last found a way of fulfilling his impossible love for me. He could be near me, adoring me to his heart's content and even touching me, as a big brother a sister; our relationship had suddenly been blessed with innocence. Now he was exempt from any ordinary expectations a lover might have had of him, where he might have fallen short. Equally, no one else could ever win me from him, since I was physically unwinnable. No need for jealousy. He was cured, redeemed, his aching ecstatic heart's wound salved.

  Or so I told myself while he escorted me, nudging my guards into the background merely by the way he walked. At first I had felt qualms about that business at the gangplank, as he explained it; yet now I congratulated myself somewhat.

  Till Tam sniffed the air anxiously. "It's so dry here," he said, more to himself than to me.

  "Yes? Pecawar's near the desert."

  Tam's feet scuffed the dust. His eyes assessed a warehouse built of sandstone blocks which we were passing.

  "Dry. Even the river was dusty."

  "What's wrong, Tam? It's a different place, that's all. Aladalia isn't the whole world. If you'd wedded, you'd have had to—"

  "I wedded my art."

  "Which you can practise here as easily as. ..." I faltered. For in that moment I had seen what he was seeing.

  "Clay," he murmured. "A potter needs clay. And not just any sort of mud, either! I need kaolin clay and petuntse clay. Kaolin is decomposed granite, and petuntse is decayed feldspar which melts into glass. That's if I want to craft real porcelain. . . . For soft paste- ware I'd only need chalk, white clay and frit. But frit's made up of gypsum, salt, soda and quartz sand. Anyhow, pasteware scratches easy and picks up grease marks. . . . And if I just wanted to craft faience or majolica, I'd still need the right sort of soft earth, wouldn't I? It's so arid here. All dust and sand. I hadn't realized."

  "Whatever you need, the guild will get."

  Tam laughed. "What, tubs of the right kinds of clay all the way from Aladalia?"

  "Why not?"

  "They'd probably dry out. Anyway, it isn't the sort of stuff you buy in any old quayside shop. It has to be sought. A potter should know his clay like his own flesh, or else he botches. He turns out second-best that cracks and crazes."

  "Can't you write to friends in Aladalia, saying exactly what you need?"

  "And wait weeks and weeks, and meantime change my plans? No, a potter should work with the local clay that he's in touch with." His shoe grooved the surface of the street. "Dust and sand all around me. Oh well, I guess I can try my hand at brickwork. Why not? I'll be a big fish in a pond that's otherwise empty." He grinned lamely.

  But of course I didn't yet know the half of it; and it was Peli who got Tam to explain fully over dinner, which we three ate privately that evening in my own chamber.

  Just before the meal was served, he presented me with his gift: a bun
dle of straw tied with twine. Within was a mass of chicken feathers. And nestling inside those ... a fragile translucent white bowl.

  A bowl about the size of Tam's hand. The sort of bowl that ought only to hold clear water with a single green leaf afloat. Or only air. There was already something floating at the bottom of the bowl beneath the glaze: a dark violet fleuradieu, last flower of deepening winter. For a moment I thought this was the very bloom which I had sent to Tam by way of goodbye. But no; it was painted exquisitely on the porcelain.

  "Why, Tam! It's beautiful. No, it's more than beautiful. Did you really craft this?"

  "Who else? It's part of a series showing all the hues of the farewell flower from summer's powder-blue to the midnight blue of year's end."

  "How did you manage it?"

  He shuffled his big feet and twisted his knobbly hands about. Lana had finished setting out some lacquer food boxes for us. She said, "Better fetch a brush and pan for the feathers, hadn't I?"

  "No. Just leave us, will you?"

  When she'd gone, Tam said, "How indeed? Well, when you sent that flower, Yaleen, something altered in me. This emblem . . . purified my art; enhanced it. It's only a little while since; it's a big change, I'd say."

  "A breakthrough?" queried Peli.

  "Hardly the word a potter would use!" Tam chuckled and pinged the bowl with his fingernail.

  "Don't!" cried Peli in alarm.

  "It won't shatter unless you chuck it across the room. It's frail but strong, as an eggshell is. A fat hen could sit on it. Talking of chickens and eggs, let's eat. I'm starving."

  We took the lids off the food boxes only to find that we'd been served with raw fish, Spanglestream-style. Obviously this was a new experience for Tam. The fish of the northern reaches are coarse and indelicate compared with those of the south. Northerly fish need frying, boiling or barbecueing. True, we didn't have such delicacies as hoke or pollfish or ajil in Pecawar waters, either. But a few species made passable substitutes. What's more, the new Spangle- stream-style restaurant whose fare we were sampling that evening had begun to experiment with importing the yellow pollfish and madder hoke alive in nets towed behind boats—though frankly these fish didn't seem to travel too happily; their flesh became a tad lacklustre en route.