The Awakeners - Northshore & Southshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  The man sniggered, not maliciously, and Thrasne grinned at him. Taken all in all, the boatmen rather liked having a carver aboard. There wasn't one of them he hadn't carved something for, as a pretty for themselves or a gift for someone they treasured. When a man only came to his home place every six to eight years, he wanted to have something special for his children, at least. Though it wasn't uncommon to find more children than reason suggested was appropriate. Many a man gone six years came back to find two- and three-year-olds, but such was the life of a boatman and accepted as such. The women couldn't be blamed, not with the procreation laws the way they were. And after all, if things like that mattered to a man, he wouldn't be on the River.

  The pier was coming up on the right, a long one, not completed yet. The oarsmen had the sweeps set in the rope locks to turn the ship as soon as the pier was past. The tide wasn't strong just now, not with the moons all strung out like this, not like Conjunction, when no one in his right mind would try to tie up except at the Riverside itself.

  "Hold fast," breathed Thrasne, locking the sculling oars out of the way of the rudder. "Hold fast."

  "I see it," grumbled the steersman. "Been doing this for twenty years."

  Thrasne ignored him. If Blint wanted him on the steer-house, it was to take charge of things.

  "Hold fast," he muttered again. "Now! Hard over!" He bent his back to the rudder as the bite of the oars took hold, taking up the slack on the tackle until it was tied hard over and they could watch the sweating men at the sweeps. Blint himself was at the line cannon. In a moment it went off with a dull thwump of its huge wooden springs, and the line arched out over the pier, where half a dozen standabouts made it fast.

  "Sweeps up," cried Blint. "Stand by the winch!"

  The ship shuddered as it began to draw toward the pier, moving against the surging tide. Thrasne shook his head, remembering the time they had taken on a boatman from a place called Thou-ne. "Born in Potipur," he said he was. Sanctimonious half-wit. Insisted that no ship had the right to oppose the tide, and the only way to moor was at the end of a line along the bank. Fool had said winching was evil, anti-life, and against the will of Potipur. He lasted until the time he took an axe to the rope during a winching operation. Assuming he had been a good swimmer and hadn't encountered the blight, he might still be alive. Since Blint had dropped him over the side in the far mid-River after dark, however, his survival was only conjectural.

  There were no other boats at the Baristown piers. Despite this, there was a considerable gathering at the end of the jetty, engaged in some noisy set-to.

  "What're they doing?" Thrasne asked.

  "Couldn't say," offered Blint. "Have a look if you like. I'll need the walkway down anyhow for those fat bellies coming." He nodded toward the town. Several members of the merchant caste were bustling toward them, each trying to be first without being ostentatious about it. None of them quite broke into a run. Thrasne set the walkway, then strolled over it, hands in pockets, down to the end of the pier.

  Most of the crowd were simple stand-abouts, though there were a few fishermen and merchant apprentices who should have been elsewhere. There was one Laugher in his polished black helm, fiddling with the flasks at his belt, staring at each member of the crowd in turn, as though he would see through to the bones. Those at the end of the jetty, however, were Awakeners directing a worker crew in dragging the River.

  2

  Thrasne got a whiff of the workers and moved back a few steps. Using workers to labor in Potipur's behalf was a religious requirement in every town they traveled by, but Thrasne thought it a stinking one, literally and philosophically. The shambling figures were so damned inefficient. Everything had to be done six times over. It took a crew of Awakened workers four times over a field to plow it, and Thrasne had never seen a ditch dug by workers fit to run water through until some competent irrigation manager cleaned it out and trued the sides. Now they were heaving hooks at the ends of long lines, tossing them about a fourth of the distance Thrasne could have thrown them, dragging them back with slow tugs against the tide.

  "What're they looking for?" he asked one of the stand-abouts.

  "Some woman went in the River. Drowned herself."

  "So? Why the dragging?"

  "She did it to get out of bein' Sorted. So they say. I don't know. All I know is the Awakener's mad as a fisherman with a blight-fish on a new line."

  The Awakener was indeed very angry. He could hear her clearly as she spat at a long-faced, miserable looking man before her. "Fulder Don! It was your duty to come to us if you thought she would do this!"

  "I didn't think she would," the long-faced man said plaintively, his voice flat, almost without expression. "I thought it was just her talk. She talked about a lot of things she never did. I didn't think she'd ever leave the baby. She cared so for the baby." The little girl in his arms was crying. About three or four years old, Thrasne thought. Old enough to remember what was going on, without being old enough to understand it.

  An old woman with a tight, lipless mouth stood beside the depressed-looking man. "Fulder Don," she said, "I've known since you married that silly fool she'd do something like this. I wouldn't have thought heresy, but who could put it past her? She hadn't an ounce of loyalty in her."

  "Mama," begged the man placatingly. "Now, Mama... "

  "Don't 'Mama' me. You married beneath you and beneath artist's caste, and that's all there is to it. Take that idiot child and give her to Delia, will you. I can't stand the sight of her. It wasn't enough her mother had to do this dreadful thing, now you're saddled with the child for her whole life."

  "Well, Mama, she's my child, too."

  "I'm not even certain sure of that." The old woman stomped off down the pier, the cane in her hand slamming down in a furious whop, whop, whap, which sent angry echoes booming under the pier over the lick and slap of the water.

  The Awakener threw up her hands, twirled her staff, and began a slow, mind-curling chant. Thrasne shut it out, humming to himself. He couldn't stand Awakener chants. If it was to escape this, this chant-driven pretense of life, this shambling excuse for existence, he did not blame the nameless woman who had drowned herself. The band of workers turned from the River to shamble back up the pier, following the glittering staff, eyeless, faceless, only their feet and hands indicating what lay beneath the loosely woven canvas sacks and hoods they wore.

  "Papa," the little girl was pleading. "Papa."

  The man paid her no attention, merely stood staring at the River as though he wanted nothing more than to be deep inside it himself. The passivity of that face moved Thrasne. His hands twitched, wanting to capture that face. This was a man who had given up. He would not do anything, not ever again. He would only float, pushed by the tide of others' lives, waiting his end under the canvas hood, deserving it.

  The child turned, caught by the watchfulness in Thrasne's face, stared at him, eyes wide and accepting with something of that same passivity. "Papa," she said again, hopelessly.

  A woman came out of the crowd to take the child, a nothing much of a woman, small and plump, older than middle-aged. "There, there, my Pammy," she said. "There, there." The child sobbed once and laid her head on the woman's shoulder. That, too, Thrasne coveted, that line of child against the woman's body, limp and exhausted, giving up everything in the acceptance of this comfort.

  Thrasne moved toward the man. What had the old woman called him? Fulder Don.

  "Fulder Don," he asked casually, as though he were only another stand-about, "why did your wife go in the River? How do you know that she did?"

  The man looked at his feet, mumbling. "A fisherman saw her. She was sick. She was afraid to die. Afraid to risk Sorting Out. My mother... was always at her. Telling her how bad she was. How incapable. I guess she thought... " His voice trailed away into nothing as he stared into the water, his long, mournful face intent upon another time.

  "She was so beautiful," he whispered at last. "So very beautif
ul."

  Something in the intonation made Thrasne look at him again. Yes. Under the shabby cloak the man wore the smock of the artist caste. An artist. Not a successful one, from the looks of it. For which Fulder Don's mama probably blamed the dead woman.

  Thrasne turned quickly to return to the Gift of Potipur, his hands itching for his carving knife. The man, the woman and child; if he was lucky, he could get both the carvings started before Blint found something else for him to do.

  They spent three days in Baris. The merchants wanted spice, but they insisted on trading bulk pamet for it. Blint would take no more pamet.

  "Silly blight-heads," he complained as still another delegation left the boat unsatisfied. "Can't seem to understand every town in this section has more pamet than they can use. We'll have to go all the way to Vobil-dil-go before anyone will want pamet. I told them we'd take toys, or those dried puncon candies, or woven pamet cloth, provided it was something out of the ordinary. They'll come to it eventually. Just takes them two or three days to make up their minds."

  On the third day they did make up their minds, and Blint did a brisk business. By dusk all the trading was done, and the crew of the Gift went into Baristown for some jollifications. Thrasne offered to guard the ship. He wanted to finish the carvings and brought them on deck to do so, working in the lantern light from the owner-house windows. He had caught Fulder Don to his own satisfaction, the sorrow, the loss. Now he was finishing the carving of the woman, Delia, and the child. There were no sounds except the soft push of the water along the sides, an occasional burst of laughter or song from the taverns.

  The soft bumping had gone on for some time before he even heard it. Once alerted to the sound, it still took him a while to find it. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. At last he leaned over the side and heard it clearly. Something in the River, knocking against the side of the boat.

  He lowered a lantern on a line to see only the oily shifting of the water. Then she came from under the wavelets to look up at him for an instant, turning in the ripples to glance sideways at him from half-closed eyes.

  "Suspirra!" He set the lantern down, shaking, rubbing his eyes with his hands. The face was Suspirra's face. The bumping went on. He lowered the light again, and again she shifted to look upward at him, the water flowing across her face, the line in which she was tangled making a silver streak across her breast.

  Sick cold in his belly, he could no more have left her there than he could have burned his own Suspirra for firewood.

  It took long moments to realize the bumping made a wooden clattering rather than the soft sound of flesh. He thought of a carving, first, and only then of the blight. This was the woman they had been dragging for. The woman who had been so beautiful, who was so beautiful. Blighted now. Wooden. And deadly. Still, he could not leave her there.

  He brought up one of the small nets, safe enough after its frag powder soak. He rigged a line to the boom. Working silently, cursing the amount of time it took, he pushed the net under her with poles, and then heaved the boom all alone against her weight, heavier than he'd thought, to lift her dripping body to the deck. She turned in the lantern light, toward him and away in a silent dance, eyes half-open in invitation, lips curved as though about to speak.

  "So beautiful," he murmured, wanting to touch her, holding himself from doing so only with difficulty. "So beautiful."

  A burst of laughter as some Riverfront tavern opened a door and spat revelers into the street. Blint would be bringing the crew back shortly. If Blint saw her, he would sell her to the family, or to the Awakeners, though what good she would be to either, Thrasne could not imagine. No. He wouldn't allow that. She had fled from them, family and Awakeners both. The woman who had fled was gone. This was his own Suspirra now.

  He plotted furiously, discarding one notion after another. Then he thought of the ventilation shaft beneath his own watching post. Up went the net once more as he guided it from the owner-house roof, down into the shaft, suspended there in its netting bag from the pole grating upon which he so often sat, where none could see it, wonder at it, touch it - save Thrasne himself.

  When Blint and the crew returned, he was crouched beneath the owner-house window, finishing the carving of Delia and the child. That night, for the first time since he had made her, he did not even look at the small carving of Suspirra.

  Night on the River in the township of Thou-ne. Lanterns gleaming along the River walk, on the quays and jetties, where the oily water throws back slippery reflections, fish belly lights, momentary glimmers. Rain misting the cobbles into fish scale paths, River sucking at the piers with fish mouth kisses, all watery and dim, silver and gray, evasive as dark bodies turning beneath dark water. Lantern man strolling along beside his wagon, wagon boy tugging, head down, sliding a little on the slick stones. Fish-oil cans in the wagon; fill the lanterns; trim the wicks; light the lanterns; then move on. Behind these two the lantern light lies in liquid puddles on the stones, pools of light, wetter than water as the crier follows after, "Dusk falls, night comes, let all abroad take themselves to home and hearth." The call so well known over lifetimes it comes out in drawn vowels, "Uhhhs aaaahs, aiiit uhnunms, aaaad ohhhhm aiiinli."

  Peasimy Plot trots along the River path, behind the crier, stepping carefully into each puddle of light to splash it onto the path. Slap, slap, slap with the soft soles of his boots, slap, slap. Light has to be distributed. Nobody sees to it but Peasimy. What good are these puddles with all the dark in between? Have to splash the light around. He does not look behind him to see the pools of light still separate and rimmed with black. He has splashed them; now the walk is lighted.

  Never mind what the eyes see. Never mind. It is what the soul sees that's important.

  "Uhhhs aaaahs," the crier calls. "Aiiit uhmmms."

  Night is already here. Potipur glares in the eastern sky, full and ominous, his face half-veiled in River mist. Viranel is half herself at the zenith, skittish behind clouds, as she becomes at these slender times; Abricor has whetted his scythe on the western horizon and goes now to harvest the crops of night. Peasimy stops in midsplash to contemplate the scythe-moon. "Harvest," he calls in a whispery fish voice, full of bubbles and liquid gurgling. "Cut down the lies, Moon of Abricor. Foul weeds of untruth. Cut them down, down, down." Then back to the splashing once more. Pitty-pat, pitty-pat, slap slap slap.

  Twelve years old, Peasimy is a neat one in his high-collared coat with the shiny buttons, his tight dark trousers fitting down into the soft boots, his perky little hat perched high on his tight, shiny hair. Daytimes he sleeps, like a strangey, lost in the depths of his sleep as in a cavern. Nighttimes he comes up for air and to look at the moon and splash lantern light. Peasimy knows Thou-ne would wither away if he didn't splash the light around. It doesn't matter no one else knows it. All night long he will continue this perambulation, spreading the light. Dawn will mean a bite of breakfast, then pulling the shades down, hiding in the dark. No one knows why, but he's been that way since childhood. No trouble to anyone. Just see him decent dressed and let him go. So says Peasimy's mama, the widow Plot. So says her kin and kith. Let him alone. He doesn't hurt anything. Poor little fellow. Lucky when he can remember his name.

  Peasimy... well, Peasimy remembers a lot of things. Peasimy remembers catching his mama putting Candy Seeds on his bed when it was supposed to be the Candy Tree growing there that did it. Peasimy remembers things Haranjus Pandel said in Temple. Peasimy remembers every lie ever told and some he only suspects. Peasimy can recognize true things when he sees them.

  Lanterns, now, they are true things. Water is true, and the widow Plot. The lantern man is true, and the crier. Daylight is so true he needn't even stay awake to watch it. All light is true. Dark is a false thing, full of lies, making you think a thing is one way when it's actually another. That's why Peasimy splashes the light. Have to fight the dark. Can't just let it overcome.

  There's an image Peasimy sees sometimes in the dusk, mayb
e in the dusk, maybe only in his head, he's not sure always where things are. But the image is there, somewhere, shining. A glowing thing. Looking at him. Looking at him and shining with its own light. Truth. Shining. He doesn't know what it is, but he expects to find it. Somewhere. Along this alley, perhaps, between splashes of his boots. Along that street.

  And until then, he goes along.

  "Aiiiih uhmmmms," calls the crier.

  "Night comes," whispers Peasimy. "Light comes."

  3

  It was six days before Thrasne was left alone and could look at the drowned woman again. Under a grove of enormous frag trees, tied up at the Riverside past Shabber, he was able to lift the net once more. He stood on the owner-house roof, staring at her in lantern light where she swayed in the net.

  She was dry now. Her hair had fluffed out like fine pamet fiber, a warm, lovely brown. Though he had thought her eyes open when he brought her aboard, they were closed now, the lashes lying softly upon her cheeks as she seemed to sleep.

  His eyes marked her, measured her, trembled over every part of her, fascinated and aroused. He had to hold his hands behind him to keep from touching her. At last he could stand it no longer. He went below and took a live fish from the cook's cage where it hung over the side. Carrying this squirming burden, he went back to her to thrust the wriggling thing against her, careful not to touch the part of it that touched her.

  He laid it on the roof, watching closely, and within moments the front part of it stopped thrashing and began to bump against the roof, moved by the tail, which was still alive. The blight lived in her still. He brought the sprayer up and covered her with a powdery, golden shower before lowering her into the shaft once more. The fish was still bumping, and he shoved it overside with a pole.

  "Suspirra," he whispered down to her. "It's all right, Suspirra. A few more days' drying, the good powder will do its work, then you can come out of there... " Except, he told himself, she could not. Where would he put her? How would he explain?