Enigma

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  The request was reasonable, even prudent, but somehow still felt like this time, stay out of my way. Thackery accepted the reproof as his due but could not stay silent. “Why are you tying yourself to these people? That can’t help us. Sometime we’re going to have to come back here and try to make Contact with the people behind the walls, or at least their bosses.”

  Then Par joined them, denying the opportunity for an answer. He circled around the back of the dray, stopping when he reached the deathbird projecting from the dashboard. With a yank and a twist, he pulled it free, then tossed it into the dray with a clatter.

  “That way,” he said, taking the free end of the crossbar and nodding toward the gate.

  Thackery fell in behind the dray as they passed through the gate and onto the east road. From there, Collins and Tyszka were always in his field of view, the shafts of the deathbirds still projecting obscenely from their bodies. He forced himself to stay there, to look at them, as a kind of self-flagellation.

  If I hadn’t been so eager to cozy up to Neale—if I hadn’t helped her pressure Sebright—you would still be laughing, Mike, instead of lying on your face in a bouncing dogcart. Jael’d still be making everyone crazy—and I’d still be the bright kid with a future. If, if, if. What a useless emotion regret is. As if the words “I’m sorry” can banish guilt, or excuse stupidity. I’m sorry all the same—

  There were few interruptions to dislodge Thackery from his recriminations, for Par showed no inclination to talk. Sebright took his cue from the Urmyk and did not press him. Then, about an hour out from Gnivi, their guide suddenly became voluble.

  “You were never in Gnivi before today,” Par said.

  “Yes.”

  Par nodded approvingly. “I would have been told. We would have heard of your death.”

  “How often do such things happen?”

  “From time to time. Rarely in the Atad Corridor, because everyone knows it is forbidden. Even the common Gnivi are barred.”

  “Then you can be shot down on other streets as well?”

  “There is no public place where you are not watched, where they could not strike at you if they so chose. There are a hundred tunnels and ten thousand watchplaces.” Par paused. “How can you know the Atad and not know things that are taught to children?”

  “We have not yet had the chance to learn.”

  “You are not Gnivi.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are not Urmyk.”

  “Yes.”

  Par banged the palm of one hand hard against the crossbar and shook his head.

  “You’re presenting him with a paradox,” Thackery offered. “Using their verb formation, one and only one of those statements can be true. You just told him they both were.”

  “Then you do not even understand why you are alive to make this trip,” Par said.

  “Is there a reason other than luck?”

  “The guardians prefer not to kill all of any party. That way there is someone to carry back the word that Gnivi is strong.”

  “I understand.”

  “They want to see fear. If you had not shown it, they would have killed you as well.”

  “But they did not try to stop you and Mamet.”

  “Because we gave the sign of submission,” Par said exasperatedly. “This is how things are done.” Releasing his grip on the shaft, he threw his hands up in the air and took several long, angry strides that put him well out in front of the procession.

  “We’ve got him thinking about us,” Thackery said hopefully.

  “They’re not all good thoughts. We put him in a position where he had to humiliate himself to help us,” Sebright said, shifting his grip. “Get on up here and help with this, huh?”

  The Urmyk home to which Par took them was less than a village and more than a camp. In a copse of smooth-rinded, waxy-leaved trees was an elevated platform for the storage of food, under which were stowed an array of hand tools, two drays, and a larger four-wheeled farm wagon.

  Slung between the surrounding trees in groups of two or three, often one above the other like a multistory house, were some two dozen sleeping hammocks. Some of the hammocks were rolled and tied, as though to keep them from collecting rain and detritus. Other hanging places were empty, as though some of the community were away for an extended time.

  Leaving the Descartes men to stand by the dray and accept the questioning stares of the Urmyk, Par went into a huddle with a wrinkle-faced gnome of a man whose silver hair was combed straight back into what appeared to be a permanent tangle.

  “This is more organized than we had given them credit for,” Sebright said. “They aren’t just gatherers. They’ve got to be doing some farming.”

  “They also have to have some ground-living pests. Everything is up.”

  The conference over, Par led the older man toward them.

  “Maija,” Par said, and walked away, his disgust evident.

  The old man reached out to finger the material of Thackery’s allover, then stepped back and squinted at them. “You are not of the Urmyk. Why do you ask our death-customs be followed? Have you none of your own?”

  “Our friends died, in your lands and at the hands of your enemies,” Sebright said.

  “They died in the city of despair and at the hands of cowards,” Maija said, more a correction of fact than a reproof. “What are the names of the dead?”

  “The woman is Jael. The other is Michael.” Maija turned to the others looking on. “Prepare canuta,” he ordered.

  Because of the difficulty the Urmyk women had with the zippers and stays, Thackery was drafted to help undress and bathe the corpses. It was an exceedingly unpleasant task, the more so since he had from time to time imagined undressing Jael in a far different context and circumstance. Those pleasant fantasies were irrevocably trashed by the sight of her brutally violated death-white skin, and he found it difficult to touch her.

  The three Urmyk women, particularly a round-bodied middle-aged woman named Taj, showed no such compunctions. It was Taj who wrestled the barbed heads of the deathbirds from the two corpses and then neatly tucked back in the ragged edges of the wounds. Taj also took the time to take note of every subtle evidence that the Descartans were not-Gnivi, not-Urmyk: their teeth, their smoothly trimmed nails, their thinly calloused feet, the transceivers plugging the left ears, the small strawberry tattoo on Jael’s hip, the appendectomy scar on Michael’s abdomen.

  She said nothing about her observations, either to Thackery or to her two assistants, but she absented herself before the preparations were through, disappearing in the direction Maija had gone with Sebright. Meanwhile, the other women produced several lengths of coarse fiber rope, and proceeded to tightly bind each corpse at the ankles, knees, wrists, and elbows.

  “Contact-4, got a moment here. Somebody just corralled Maija for a conference. He’s been showing me the fields,” Sebright said in Thackery’s ear. “The Urmyk idea of farming seems to be to keep a natural mix of crops, not in rotation but at the same time. So they don’t really have fields, more like cultivated foraging areas. They prune out the weaker plants and lay them out for the pests. By the way, I got a glimpse of one, and if it wasn’t a mouse, it was something you wouldn’t mind calling one. If you’re free to talk, let me know how things are progressing. Any idea yet whether we’re looking at burial or cremation?”

  “Not really,” Thackery said. “Is that person talking to Maija a stocky woman, forty-ish, wearing a vest a couple sizes too small for her?”

  “That’s her.”

  “Then the conference is about us. She gave Mike and Jael a real close going-over, and she’s probably giving him an earful about just how strange we are.”

  “Good,” Sebright said, inexplicably. “Looks like we’re going to head back. See you presently.”

  As dusk came on, the bodies were taken to the west edge of the copse, where they were laid side by side near the base of a tall waxleaf tree. The Urmyk formed a one-deep circl
e around the bodies, and Maija moved into the center. He stood over the bodies and spoke to them.

  “Spirit of Jael. Spirit of Michael. Witness the service we now do you, that you may depart to the place and condition where you now belong.”

  The Urmyk then began to chant, voices hushed as though a group whisper:

  Spirit free

  Fly to heaven

  Leave friends in peace

  Accept your ending

  Par came forward as Maija retreated, knelt and grasped Jael’s corpse in a headlock. In his other hand flashed a small tool Thackery could not recognize. The Urmyk’s body blocked Thackery’s view of what was happening.

  “What are they doing?” he demanded of Sebright, who stood at the opposite end of the circle, chanting with the others as he looked on.

  “Trephination.”

  “What?”

  “Drilling holes in the skull.”

  “That’s barbar—”

  SPIRIT FREE, FLY TO HEAVEN

  The chant suddenly grew louder as Par leaped to his feet and held the plug of scalp and hair high above his head for the group to see. Then he knelt by Tyszka and began again.

  “Think what you like, but keep it off your face,” Sebright said. “If you show disapproval, you may ruin what I’m trying to do.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Win us an audience with the man we came to Gnivi to see.”

  The chant grew even louder as Par stood again with another trophy. Then he brought the plug from Michael’s body to Thackery, and from Jael’s to Sebright.

  “My words, now,” Sebright called out suddenly, and stepped forward. The chant died away to a murmur, and both Par and Maija showed displeasure at the interruption.

  But Sebright took no notice. Kneeling between the bodies, he bowed his head and began to pray, “Creator of the numberless worlds, Architect of the design of life, Guardian of our immortal souls, accept these Your servants into the everlasting peace of death, preserving them in Your living memory for the infinite time to come.”

  The prayer was a double-barreled surprise for Thackery. The first was that Sebright chose to say it loudly and clearly in English, though it was perfectly translatable. The second was the prayer itself: It was part of the Rite of Death of the Universal Creation Church. But the prayer seemed to please the Urmyk, who cheered Sebright as he left the circle and came to stand with Thackery.

  “Was that just for show, or are you a Creationist?”

  “Most human cultures have an abiding respect for mysticism, even someone else’s mysticism.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I know.” In the meantime, the Urmyk had taken up their rhythmic, poetic chant again. Sebright joined in loudly, elbowing Thackery to do the same. They looked on as two young Urmyk men came forward and hoisted the bodies pick-a-back, their bound arms giving Collins and Tyszka an unflagging grip on their respective bearers’ necks.

  “Pallbearers,” Sebright said in an aside to Thackery.

  Then, in a startling display of strength even for an 0.8 gravity field, the Urmyk began to climb the tree, hauling themselves upward from limb to limb with an agility that defied the dead weights with which they were burdened. Within a short span of time, during which the chant took on a more belligerent tenor, Collins and Tyszka were left hanging naked from a high branch of the tree, dangling from ropes looped under their armpits.

  The sight of it brought all of Thackery’s accumulated outrage welling up. “We can’t leave them there,” he said angrily. “They were our friends—shipmates. To see them like this—what kind of deal are you making with these people? What can they do for you that will be worth this kind of disgrace?”

  Sebright took Thackery by the arm and steered him firmly toward the yellow fires which marked the heart of the copse, falling in step with the Urmyk who were scattering, laughing and jabbering, to their chores and games.

  “Disgrace? Can’t you see the beauty in the ceremony?”

  “Boring holes in people’s heads!”

  “Cro-Magnon people did it while the patient was alive, to exorcise demons,” Sebright said. “With the Urmyk it’s different. They seem to fear recrudescence, as if the dead person has a choice between reanimating the body and passing on. That explains everything we saw—binding the body, the trephination, hanging them in a high place. They want the dead to stay dead, so they load the choice, encourage the spirit to leave—think about the chant. All of which means they have the profound self-awareness to know that something leaves the body at death, and the humanity to wish well for it. You judge them too harshly.”

  “You may say so—”

  “Stop introducing your cultural biases. Accept them on their own terms. You may see things you can’t now,” Sebright said sharply. “Look, Maija has provided a hammock for each of us. I’m going to make good use of mine. I suggest you do the same.”

  But before he could settle in, Sebright was intercepted by a young Urmyk girl. “Maija wants you, at the tree of the dead,” she said, then skipped away.

  A crooked grin lit up Sebright’s face. “I think this is it,” he said, and started back the way they had come.

  “What do you want me to do?” Thackery called after him.

  “Eavesdrop,” Sebright threw back over his shoulder.

  Thackery lay in his hammock and listened, feeling useless and extraneous.

  —We have all watched you, and none can say when they have seen such before. Par believes you are spies from the Gnivi, that the Atad plots again to make its dominion grow. Taj believes you are golem.

  —We are neither of those things. We are brothers. We breathe as one, our hearts beat to the same rhythm. We are part of you, and you are part of us.

  —So my eyes tell me. But where have you come from? And why have you come here?

  —The last I have told Par already. We come to talk with the wisest of all men, the exemplar of conscience, he whose domain reaches from one end of the Green Land to the other.

  —Then talk, for I am he.

  Braggart, Thackery thought.

  —First there are things I must understand. Why is the city armed against you?

  —They fear us because we are strong. They hate us because they must depend on us.

  —For food?

  —Yes.

  —And you depend on them for your metal tools, for the wheels of your drays—

  —We depend on them for nothing. We need none of that for ourselves, only for what we do for them. If you traveled farther from the city, you would see none of these things.

  —Why do you feed the Gnivi?—It is the price of peace. So long as they need us, the Atad dare not anger us too much.—Why do they not come out of the city and gather their own food?

  —Because I will not permit it.

  —You could defeat them?

  —In our lands, as they could defeat us in theirs.

  —How long has this been the order?

  —Thirty generations.

  —And you arc content with it?

  —They see us come into the city, and know that we are free, and that they are not. In time, the Gnivi will grow tired of their imprisonment, and place new leaders in the Atad.

  —What about before?

  —Before, we built the city.

  Thackery sat bolt upright in his hammock, nearly falling out in the process. “These are the real Gnivi,” he exclaimed aloud.

  —Who was the first Urmyk?

  —No one knows.

  —I know. He was one of us.

  —And what is that? Where are you from? From the Lake of Salts? From the Brown Lands?

  —If you climb to the top of the highest tree, can you see all men everywhere? Can you see to the end of a road when you stand on it? Or are there men and places beyond seeing, even the sight of the wisest of the Urmyk?

  —There are.—We are from such a place, of such a distance that no Urmyk alive has ever traveled there.—We have been the
length of the river and the breadth of the Green Land.

  —You have not traveled into the sky.

  Silence.

  —Is Taj right, after all? You come from the place of the dead?—The sky is larger than you have imagined, and there is room enough for both the dead and the living. Every light that you see above us is a land larger than that the Urmyk know.

  —A place too far to see—

  —Yes.

  —Each star—

  —Every one.

  —In rimes recent, there was a new star—There. See it there.

  The canopy overhead was too thick for Thackery to see through, but he doubted Descartes was even a second magnitude star. The fact that the Urmyk had noticed it said much.

  —That is our home. When the sun rises, I will call down a dray from it. My companion and I are needed elsewhere. But if you will accept them, we will leave others, to stay with you, to learn from you about you, to teach you of us. Will you accept them? Will you make them part of the Urmyk?

  There was barely an instant’s hesitation.

  —We will.

  In the morning, they waited for the gig in the field to the east of Marja’s camp. Your finest hour, Thackery thought as he looked at Sebright. You plucked triumph out of the disaster I created.

  Sebright caught the look. “Regrets?”

  “Jael and Mike.”

  “They bought us our introduction. You still regret leaving them?”

  “No,” he said truthfully. “They died here. Where else should they be?”

  “Something else, then.”

  Thackery shrugged. “You didn’t even need me.”

  “Because you did your job right when we were still on board. I didn’t want to need you here. Or anyone.”

  Then Maija joined them to watch the gig spiral down. As it grew nearer and its size became clear, several of the Urmyk fled to the safety of the edge of the copse, and when the noise of its engines reached the ground most of the rest joined them there. Maija flinched but stayed at their elbow, and was the first to move forward when the gig had come to rest.