Greg Bear - Hegira

by Hegira (lit)

He paced back and forth before the blank barrier, not daring to touch it, afraid this was truly the end and he had been rejected, murmuring automatic prayers, but no longer certain to which god if any they were directed. He thought perhaps the Ibisian had been allowed to pass, and his face flushed with anger and a kind of envy. Finally, furious, he reached out to strike the barrier with his fist. His hand vanished and he stumbled through.

  At that moment, Kiril began to understand the power of Hegira. Beyond the insubstantial partition was a clear view of darkness and fire doves. He stood in a transparent hemi-sphere about ten meters across, the glass or whatever sub-stance it was made of supported by a waist-high wall. The air in the chamber was musty but breathable. There was no sign of Bar-Woten.

  He walked to the edge, and realized he must be looking over the top of the Wall at the end of the world. The upper surface of the Wall was a featureless dark plain that stretched in front and to each side to a seemingly flat horizon.

  Kiril circled to the opposite side of the dome, around the man-high half-circle through which he had entered, and which must have been a kind of doorway. From that vantage, he looked down through a bluish haze and thick layers of clouds to the surface of his world. Holding up a finger, he wonderingly traced rivers and mountain ranges and the broad delta of the Pale Seas. He could make out the cloud-wrapped line of the fallen Obelisk in Weggismarche and Pallasta, and the upright Obelisks of other lands, thousand of kilometers distant.

  He slumped to his knees and lifted his elbows to the edge of the dome, leaning his head in the crook of one arm, too astonished to think, much less worry about what had hap-pened to Bar-Woten. For an hour, he stared at the umbers and greens and grays of continents and the blues and more pronounced greens of oceans; russet, sienna and ochre deserts and grassy plains, tracks of mountains spreading like frost on glass, anvils and fish-skeletons of clouds, puffs of storms and whorls of hurricanes, all stretching to a broad line of blue on the high, immensely broad horizon. And rising over land, sea and sky, the stolid needles with their tops of sheet sunlight, on a level with the Wall and the dome. I am as tall as an Obelisk.

  Then the Obelisks' light faded. The land became shadowy and night snugged fit across Hegira. The fire doves gleamed more brightly without daylight's competition from below.

  With a contentment he hadn't known since childhood - a recognition of forces higher than himself, in which he must place his trust or simply give up in despair - he put his gear on the floor of the dome and went to sleep beneath the glimmer of the fire doves.

  Bar-Woten found his own barrier. He reached out to feel the plug on the tunnel, and when his hand passed through, he closed his eye and stepped forward resolutely, more than half expecting to die.

  Kiril awoke from some vague dream and rolled over on his back.

  "Good morning," greeted the man standing over him.

  For a moment, with Kiril's vision unfocused, he thought it might be Bar-Woten, but then he tensed and slowly backed up against the hemisphere's waist-high wall. The man carried a pack, and wore clothes similar to his own, but he was not the Ibisian. His face was well-tanned and deeply grooved with sun-and-wind wrinkles. His hair was a backward-swept mop of solid gray. His nose was an oft-broken, crooked ruin, and he had a grin as devious as his nose, but he did not seem unfriendly. In one hand he clutched a round black ball the size of a small apple. Kiril glanced down at his feet and saw the man wore no shoes.

  "You've only been here a little while," the man said. "Need some guidance?" He was speaking Pallastan, not radically different from Teutan, but with an odd inflection.

  "I'm sure I do," Kiril said. "How long have you been here?"

  "In the observatory? Just a few minutes. You surprised me, lying here. I've been in the Wall for a year, maybe two. I'm not clear about time any more. You're not from Weggismarche, but you speak the tongue fairly well... Have you traveled far?"

  Kiril got to his feet. "From a place called Mediweva. Thousands of kilometers. Tens of thousands."

  The man nodded. "I've heard of it. Sailors bring back stories. Or at least, they used to. Is my country still there? Pallasta?"

  Kiril hesitated, then shook his head. "It's in very sad shape."

  The man's shoulders slumped. "Then this is my home. My name is Jury." He offered his hand.

  "Kiril." The man's grip was firm but not brusque.

  "This place will take getting used to. It has a secret, you know. Have you found the secret yet?"

  "No, I don't think so," Kiril said. He pointed to the man's clenched hand. "Is it the ball?"

  "No," the ball replied in a child's voice. Kiril started back, then caught himself and covered his surprise by reaching down to pick up his pack. The Pailastan smiled.

  "Not strictly the secret, but it will help you understand. I don't listen to it much any more. You have to ask it a question, and then it will answer, except when you first get yours. Then it tells you what it is."

  "We all get one?"

  "I assume so. You know about the migration?"

  Kiril nodded. "What is the ball?"

  Jury hefted the object in question and scowled at it. "It says it's part of the world. I don't trust it completely, not now. I keep it around because it knows a few useful things."

  "Where do I find mine?"

  Jury pointed at the half-circle gate. "Back through there. There's a place where we get food and water, and a place to sleep, if you wish to use it."

  "It doesn't go back to the tunnel?"

  Jury smiled with some superiority. "You can't get back to the tunnel, and you can't get home again... unless you do what it tells you. I haven't. Others have. I don't know where they went. Maybe the ball lies."

  Kiril took a deep breath. "Let's go, then."

  "Did your woman die, too?" Jury asked as they walked to the other side of the gateway.

  "She didn't die. She turned solid, like ice or silver."

  "As good as dead. Mine did the same. I listened to legends. My father told me the legends, and what to do. He died of old age just before I left for the Wall. I felt obligated to follow through. Everybody thought I should. But now that I'm here... well, it's another story."

  "I have some pretty strong reasons," Kiril said. "Show me the way."

  Jury stepped forward, but did not enter the gateway.

  "You came a long way. Saw a lot of strange things, too, I bet."

  "Yes."

  Jury stepped through first, and Kiril followed.

  They stood in a hall, about twice as long as it was wide, and three meters from floor to ceiling. At the end of the hall was a large circular room with an opaque domed ceiling. A glowing bulge at the top of the dome provided heat and light. As he walked around the room, Kiril discovered that parts of the floor were spongy. "You can sleep here," Jury explained.

  At the center of the room was an austere white table. As they stepped near, the table hummed and bowls appeared. Two contained a thin, souplike fluid that steamed and gave off an appetizing odor. Others held fruit and raw vegetables. "Thank you," Jury said to the walls. "Always pays to be polite. Of course, they never answer back. Maybe I've been here too long." Jury threw Kiril an appraising glance, then picked up a cup of cool red liquid and toasted Kiril. He squatted on his haunches by the table to eat. Kiril stood nearby, unsure what he was supposed to do.

  Jury moved an upside-down bowl on the table, revealing another ball. This one was the color of pewter. "Must be yours," he said, rolling it across the surface at Kiril. Kiril reached out to grab it.

  "Well, go ahead, ask it something," Jury encouraged.

  Kiril dropped it into his pants pocket. "I'll wait until later."

  Jury shrugged and dipped his fingers into the soup, licking them enthusiastically. "No utensils. Make you eat like an animal."

  When they had eaten their fill, they moved back from the table and lay down on two spongy areas in the floor. The empty bowls silently vanished, sinking into the table top.

  "
There's another place you'll want to see before you go to sleep," Jury said. "After a while, you'll get used to the routine. You use the same door, but go to a different place each time. First there's the observatory, where we just were, then here, then the next place." He dropped a fruit core onto the floor. It liquefied and was absorbed. "But never back to the tunnel. Never home. Won't let you... unless."

  "I'm ready," Kiril said, standing and wiping his hands on his pants. Jury jumped to his feet with a grin and walked back down the hall to the half-circle, and through. Kiril followed.

  Why did you come here?

  Bar-Woten spun through darkness in a kind of dream, and decided he would not answer questions from somebody or something he could not see.

  You are not marked. Why did you come here?

  The answers were taken from him anyway, as hard as he fought to close his mind. Then they were presented to him, brushed and groomed - put in order. He listened to this more organized version of his inner voice with little recognition at first.

  "I must know what I am, why we are here. I must know why it was necessary for me to kill so many, if the First-born had once been like gods. Why does it all come back to me?"

  You accompanied a true pilgrim, one who was marked. Did you protect him?

  "Yes. I brought him here, I told him why he must come here. He would not have come without me."

  I am grateful for this.

  Bar-Woten realized the "I" referred to was Hegira itself, but he was past wonder now.

  You were not marked, and are not part of this plan. Still, you have served me. You carried the legend to the pilgrim. Perhaps I in turn can serve you. Where do you wish to go?

  "Can you tell me, why all this suffering? Why the fall back to what the First-born were in their youth?"

  You may learn that soon enough, from other pilgrims. Where do you wish to go?

  "Someplace where I might learn." Bar-Woten compared himself with Kiril, strong and bold soldier and adventurer with reluctant, mystically inclined scholar, and felt an intense envy. Things were all out of proportion. He had been the leader and the instigator. Why had he not been marked?

  Hegira itself touched his thoughts lightly and found another wish he had hardly acknowledged over the decades. This much is granted to you, his world told him, and the darkness began to clear.

  Kiril and Jury entered a glass-walled, cramped cabin sus-pended high above the Wall. From here, to their left they had a direct view of the lands beneath the Wall, and of the rim of the world they had known as their own. Looking down to the right, they saw the outer edge of the Wall. At five thousand kilometer intervals along the Wall's inner edge, overlooking the lands and seas, Kiril discerned the much shorter glowing columns that carried on the light-spreading function of the Obelisks.

  Beyond the sinuous, broadly scalloped outer edge, Kiril looked down... and down, into a river of endless night. The immense gulf of black meandered between the grayness of the near Wall and yet another Wall beyond, two distinct segments of the world. The two walls and the gulf spanned at least several thousand kilometers, vanishing to either side in very gradual curves. Kiril recalled Bar-Woten's estimate of Hegira's size - 249,000 kilometers in diameter - and did a quick calculation. Hegira had a circumference of about 780,000 kilometers.

  Beyond the river of night, contained within the next Wall, was yet another land. It seemed different, as if seen through a distorted red glass. That, Kiril guessed, was the home of the demons - the thin ones.

  He shook his head, dizzy. "Where are we?" he asked, feeling sudden vertigo.

  "No need to worry," Jury assured him. "If you look down on the other side, you'll see we're on top of a tall, thin tower. It holds us up here. We're not flying or falling."

  "What's that beyond the river, the gap?"

  "Another part of Hegira. Ask the ball. It'll tell you more, but you might not understand. It has difficulty speaking to mere humans, mere Second-born."

  "How much will I understand?"

  "That depends on how much you learned before you got here. If you're one of those crazy English-speakers, you might understand a lot. If you're like me, you might spend months listening, trying to understand, and get only a little. I was just a road-crew worker."

  The next section of Hegira moved perceptibly, spinning opposite the section containing the land where he had been born, where he had lived and traveled. He removed the ball from his pocket. "What's in the gap?" he asked it.

  "Please specify," the ball requested in a slightly different, but still childlike voice.

  "What's in the darkness between the Walls?"

  "Emptiness; a near vacuum. At the center of Hegira, beneath the counter-rotating segments, there is a singularity."

  "Ah," Jury said. "That's a hard one. It'll take a while to explain that one."

  "Then I'll ask later."

  "Just as bard later."

  "What is Hegira?" Kiril asked the ball.

  "I'll answer that," Jury interrupted.

  "Misinformation is not allowed," both balls said together. "This extension will answer," Kiril's ball continued singly.

  "I can tell him in words he'll understand!" Jury protested.

  "You do not understand yourself, yet," his ball warned. "And there can be no brief explanation."

  "Let's put these things down for a minute," Jury said, exasperated. He reached for Kiril's ball but Kiril withdrew it, clutching it to his chest.

  "Stop it," he demanded. "I'm getting confused and angry."

  "Jury has not made a crossing," the balls said in unison. "There can be no understanding without a crossing."

  "It's lying," Jury said with a sneer on his already crooked lips.

  "Is my woman's doppelganger on the other side?" Kiril asked.

  "Yes."

  "Your woman has no double out there, nor does mine," Jury said.

  "Incorrect."

  "Put that thing down and come listen!" The Pallastan beseeched with both hands, the left trying to muffle his own sphere.

  "I'm sorry. I'll stick with the ball," Kiril said. He felt some of Bar-Woten's instincts guiding him, wherever the Ibisian was now.

  "I have no reason to cross," the Pallastan said wearily, sighing. "The Obelisk wiped out my country. My woman has to be dead."

  "Did you ask whether she's alive?"

  "No. I don't want to know. All right, you're so curious, do as you please. Ask it everything. You'll end up like the others who have passed through here - you'll never be seen again!" Jury's face was a mask of forced mirth, eyes wide. His hands trembled. He exited through the gateway and Kiril was alone.

  He looked down at the ball, no larger than an apple, and tried to gather his questions in order of importance. "Tell me what Hegira is," he demanded again.

  "This question will take a long time to answer. It requires a history of the First-born."

  "I'm ready," Kiril said.

  "It will not be told in mere words," the ball warned. "There is not time."

  Kiril nodded. "Go ahead."

  Bar-Woten shook himself awake. His clothes were wet with dew and muddy; he was surrounded by rough clods of dirt. Above, the night's last few fire doves hung like tiny lanterns in the sky. The soldier's anger was slow in coming; he had to remember where he had been, and what he had been told, and then he had to decide it was not all a dream. At first, he got to his feet and looked around the newly-ploughed field for Barthel and Kiril. When the memory of Barthel's death returned to him, it was too painful and immediate to be a delusion; Bar-Woten cursed and kicked at clods. It had all been real: the decades-long March, the journey, the capture, the death, the separation in the tunnel - and his denial by Hegira.

  "God damn you!" he shouted, stomping clods. "God damn you!"

  Then his discipline reasserted itself, and he straightened out of his discouraged slouch. Where was he?

  There was the field, and low hills around it. The smell of a moderate-sized body of water, faintly scented by lilies. It
was all familiar...

  Dawn came in a rush to the land, the sky passing through its spectrum and sheets of light growing between the Obelisks. That much he knew, if not where he was...

  With the dawn, a flock of large birds rose in a pale mass from beyond the hills. He heard a farmer's coarse voice singing and the lowing of cattle... The fanner was singing in Ibisian.

  The birds were ibises. They flew overhead, swooping low, welcoming him. Bar-Woten stared up, blinking in wonder.

  After twenty years, he was home.

  There was no immediate revelation of mystical completeness and beauty, only a child's voice informing him this was business for cerebral absorption and not religious inspiration. Generations after could look back upon the story (as Kiril would tell it; he saw himself surrounded by legions of children, stretching off on all sides) with awe if they wished, but for now it had to be explicated coldly and rationally.